Letters from Ireland

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LETTERS

IRELAND

HAREIET MARTINEAIT.

EEFRINTEB FROM TUB 'DAILY NEWS.'

LONDON:

JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STEAND.
1852.

ms^u^QK

PRINTED BY

JOHN EDWARD TAYLOE, LITILE QUEEN STREET,
Lincoln's inn fields.

PREFACE

These Letters were communicated to the ' Daily News'
during my journey in Ireland this last autumn. A
reprint of them, as a volume, has been asked for, and
I now obey the call. My readers will take them for
what they are — a rapid account of impressions received
and thoughts excited from day to day, in the course
of a journey of above 1200 miles. I have thought
it best not to alter them, either in form or matter.
There would be no use in attempting to give anything
of the character of a closet -book to letters written
sometimes in a coffee-room, sometimes in the crowded
single parlour of a country inn, — now to the sound of
the harp, and now to the clatter of knives and forks,
and scarcely ever within reach of books; therefore
have I left untouched what I wrote, even to the no-
tices of passing incidents as if they were still present,
and references to a future alreadv fulfilled.

M196859

iv PREFACE.

The issue of the Letters in this form enables me to
render one acknowledgment which I was rather uneasy
not to be able to make at the time — an acknowledg-
ment of my obHgations to the members of the Dublin
Statistical Society and of the Belfast Social Inquiry
Society, whose tracts, before interesting to me by my
own fireside, were of high value in my journey, by di-
recting my observation and inquiries. They not only
taught me much, but put me in the way to learn more.
When I had the honour of meeting Professor Hancock
in Dublin, and told him how freely I was using his
ideas in my interpretation of Irish affairs, he made
me heartily welcome to all such materials as might be
found in his tracts, saying that all that any of us want
is that true views should spread, for the benefit of
Ireland. He can afford to be thus generous ; and I,
for my part, must request my readers to ascribe to
him, and the other economists of those societies,
whatever they may think valuable in my treatment of
economical questions in this volume ; the rest is the
result of my own observation, inquiry, and reflection,
on the way.

H. M.

The Knoll, Ambleside,

December 20M, 1852.

CONTENTS,

Page
LETTER I.

LOUGH FOYLE AND ITS ENVIRONS ... 1

LETTER II.

WEST OF ULSTER WEEDS — LONDON COMPANIES

TEMPLEMOYLE AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL . . 8

LETTER III.

THE DERRY AND COLERAINE RAILWAY PRODUCE

AND TRAFFIC OF THE DISTRICT — BEAUTIFUL

SCENERY WHAT CAN PUBLIC WORKS DO FOR

IRELAND? 17

LETTER IV.

THE LINEN MANUFACTURE — FLAX GROWING AND

DRESSING 25

LETTER V.
AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT IN ULSTER . . 34

r

VI CONTENTS.

Pape
LETTER VI.

IRELAND DYING OF TOO MUCH DOCTORING — THE

' TENANT eight" QUESTION .... 41

LETTER VII.
HOW IRELAND IS TO GET BACK ITS WOODS . . 49

LETTER VIII.
LEINSTER — IRISH INDUSTRY — RELIGIOUS FEUDS 57

LETTER IX.

THE WOMEN 65

LETTER X.

RAILWAY FROM DUBLIN TO GALWAY — BOG OF

ALLEN 73

LETTER XL
GALWAY 82

LETTER XII.
CONNEMARA 92

LETTER XIII.

THE fEOPLE AND THE CLERGY . . . . iUl

LETTER XIV.
ENGLISH SETTLERS IN THE " WILDS OF THE

west" . . . . . . . . lUlJ

CONTENTS. TU

Page

LETTER XV.

ACHILL 117

LETTER XVL
THE WILDS OF EERIS 126

LETTER XYIL
CASTLEBAR — PAUPERS EMIGRANT FAMILY . 134

LETTER XTTII.
IRISH LANDLORDS AND IRISH POTATOES . . 142

LETTER XIX.
LANDLORDS, PRIESTS, AND VOTERS . . .150

LETTER XX.
THE WORKHOrSES 157

LETTER XXI.
KILLARNEY 166

LETTER XXII.
THE RIVAL CHURCHES 173

LETTER XXIII.
FROM KILLARNEY' TO YALENTIA — DINGLE BAY —

CAHIRCIYEEN 181

LETTER XXIY.
VALENTIA 189

vm CONTENTS.

Page
LETTER XXV.

PRIESTS AND LANDLORDS — NEW FEATURES OF

IRISH LIFE 19G

LETTER XXVL
EMIGRATION AND EDUCATION .... 205

LETTER XXVn.
THE PEOPLE AND THE TWO CHURCHES . .212

LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

LETTER I.

LOUGH FOYLE AND ITS ENVIRONS.

August 10, 1852.
Travellers usually enter Ireland by Dublin; and
Dublin being a good deal like other large cities, and
having the varied population of a capital, there is so
little that is distinctive at the first glance, that the
strange^, exclaims, " I thought I was in Ireland ; but
where are the Paddies ?^^ The Paddies, and the true
signs of the times in Ireland, may be better seen by
dropping into the island at almost any other point of
the coast. Eor some reasons, it may be well to begin
by steaming into Lough Foyle, and landing at the
famous old Derry, whose prefix of " London^' seems
rather an impertinence when one is fairly among the
Paddies. It is true that, by entering Ireland from
this point, the traveller's attention is first given to
districts of country which have for centuries been ma-
naged by Englishmen, and largely peopled by Scotch,
— it is true that the lands of the great London

» LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

corporations cannot be taken as specimens of Irish
tillage and management; but it may be well to see,
in the first instance, what the Irish peasantry can be
and can do in a region where the peculiarities of land
proprietorship in Ireland are suspended or extin-
guished. It may be well to see first some of the most
prosperous parts of the country, in order to carry else-
where the hope that the use of similar means may
produce a similar prosperity. There are quite enough
of the Catholic peasantry dwelling on the lands of
the London Companies to give the stranger a good
study of the Paddies, and moreover to show what the
relations of the " mere Irish" may be with the resi-
dents of Enghsh and Scotch descent.

After entering Lough Toyle at Portrush, we were
struck by the extent of cultivation on both shores.
Pields, green or tinged with the yellow of the harvest
mouth, divided by hedgerows into portions somewhat
too small for good economy, stretched over the rising
grounds which swell upwards from the Lough. Here
and there are labyrinths of salmon-nets, marking the
fisheries of the Companies. Then follows an odd
spectacle — a low embankment and railway, apparently
through the water, near the south-east shore, enclosing
an ugly expanse of mud or shallow water. There was
a company established in London a good many years
ago for the purpose of reclaiming large extents of
land from the bed of Lough Poyle ; and this is the
point which the operations of that company have
reached, — or, as we fear we must say, where they have
for the present stopped. The undertaking cannot be

LOUGH FOYLE AND ITS ENVIRONS. 3

called a failure. By the terms made with the Pish-
mongers' Company, that corporation was to have 500
acres of the reclaimed land; and of this 250 acres
have been cropped for five years, and have proved
fertile to the last degree. This bit of experience has
proved useful. Looking towards the Lough from any
high ground for miles inland, one sees level tracts of
a peculiar yellow or brownish soil. These are the
^^ dob lands," retrieved from the shallow waters. An-
tiquarians and naturalists are of opinion that this
method of procedure is simply a continuation of what
has been done for many ages, by natural or artificial
means. The lieaps or mounds of gravel, earth, and
stones wliich are found scattered over the bog districts
which are stripped of peat are called " derries;" and
here, once upon a time, flourished clumps of oaks,
rearing their heads over the forests of firs wliich filled
up the intermediate spaces. Below the roots of the
bog firs, now dug out for sparkling fuel in the rich
man's house, and for torches or candles in the poor
man's cabin, are evidences that the waters once co-
vered all the low grounds, and that the habitable
portions of the whole district were only the rising
grounds and " derries," wliich were so many islands
and promontories stretching out into a world of wa-
ters. Thus the changes going on are not new, though
proceeding more rapidly continually. The reclama-
tion is not only from the Lough. The bog is inces-
santly lessening. Two thousand acres have been
brought under tillage on the estates of one of the
London Companies. There is plenty of lime in the

B 2

4 LETTEES FROM lEELA^D.

district, and the Lough furnislies any amount of sea
shells for the carriage. As the peat is cleared off, the
subsoil is fertilized by these means, and presently
repays cultivation. To the farmers whose lands lie
alons: rivers and railwavs it must answer well to im-
port coal, and spare for more profitable works the
labour hitherto spent on cutting and dr}'ing peat ; but
the people who live in the mountains, away from
means of transport, will doubtless burn peat, and
nothing else, till the bogs are wholly exhausted, — a
period which seems already within sight.

After passing the salmon-nets we came upon a fine
tract of woodland, on the north-west shore of the
Lough, where it stretches down from the ridge of the
low hills to the very seaweeds which the tide washes
up. Some good houses peep out from among the
trees. It was not till we had travelled some distance
inland that we learner] to appreciate that tract of
woodland. The woods have shrunk and disappeared
over whole districts where formerly they were che-
rished for the sake of the large exportation of staves,
and use of timber which took place under the old
timber duties. When the demand for staves died off,
and even the Companies found that their own car-
penters could put down floors for them as cheaply by
buying foreign timber as by employing labour in fell-
ing and seasoning their own trees, there was, for a
time, a somewhat reckless consumption of wood. But
now the process of planting is going on vigorously ;
and the last ten years have made a visible change. Li
the moist lauds the alder flourishes, attaining a size

I

LOUGH FOYLE AND ITS ENVIRONS. O

wliich we never before saw. Larch and fir abound,
and great pains are taken with oak plantations. Huge
stacks of bark for the tanners may be seen here and
there ; and the wood is readily sold as it is felled.

The changes in the productions and exports are
worth notice. Formerly there was much linen ma-
nufacture here ; but that is over : Belfast seems to
have absorbed it. A good deal of flax is grown^ and
sold to Belfast; but the clack of the loom is scarcely
heard. Again, there was a great exportation of pigs
and pork prior to 184^6 ; but the potato-rot has almost
put an end to pig-keeping. Scarcely any cured pork
is sent out. Live cattle are an article of increasing
export, — the fat to Liverpool, and the lean to various
parts for fattening. Almost all the oats and other
grain raised are now exported, the people finding it
answer to sell their oats, and eat Indian meal, which
they import from America. One consequence of this
is a marked improvement in their health. The dis-
gusting diseases which attended upon an almost ex-
clusive oaten diet have disappeared; and certainly
a more healthy-looking population than that about
Newtown-Limavady we do not remember to have
seen. There is a large export of butter, eggs, and
fowls. On the whole, the change is visible enough
from the old manufacturing to the modern agricul-
tural population; and it is very interesting to the
observation of an English visitor.

From the site of the new Cathohc chapel on the estates
of the fishmongers' Company a wide view is obtained,
extending from the high lands of Donegal on the other

6 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

shore of the Lough to the Coleraine mountains.
Within this space the divisions of the soil indicate
pretty accurately the classes of its inhabitants. After
the Eebellion, the victors drove the Catholics into
the mountains, and the alluvial lands — all that was
fertile and valuable — were taken possession of by the
English and the Scotch Presbyterians. The arrange-
ment was so marked and decisive that the mountain-
eers are called " Irish^' to this day. Por a long
time past the " Irish" have been creeping down into
the low grounds. At first, the Protestants emigrated
in a much greater proportion than the Catholics ; and
a Protestant farmer often left a Catholic substitute in
his farm. Now, the Catholics are beginning to emi-
grate in much greater numbers ; but, as the Protes-
tants go on emigrating also, so that the total popula-
tion is in course of reduction, there is more and more
room left in the low country for the mountaineers,
who find themselves able to come down, and hold
their ground among the thriving Presbyterians. "We
find here little or nothing of the feuds which divide
the two classes in too many places. We find, on the
Fishmongers' property, schools where children of all
faiths sit side by side on their benches, as their respec-
tive pastors do in their committee-room. The priest,
the clergyman, and the Presbyterian minister act to-
gether, on the National system, in perfect harmony.
Some zealous young priests awhile ago insisted that
the CathoUc children should read the Douay version
of the Scriptures. The clergyman and agent wisely
consented, stipulating only that it should be the

LOUGH FOYLE AND ITS ENVIRONS. 7

Douay version, without note or comment. It was
presently found inconvenient to use it; the priests
declared that really the difference to the children was
so small as not to compensate for the inconvenience,
and they themselves proposed to return to the use of
the accustomed books. No Ribbon Society exists
among the Catholics in this neighbourhood ; and no-
thing seems to be needed in the way of precaution
but a little watchfulness against infection brought by
navvies and other strangers, and a careful impartiality
between Catholics and Protestants in matters of busi-
ness, and moderation in spirit and language on poli-
tical matters, on the part of official men and magis-
trates. "We find a Company building a handsome
Catholic chapel, and their agent presenting its painted
window ; we find the gentry testifying that, while the
Protestants are certainly the more industrious people,
the Catholics are more honest and the women more
chaste, — Tacts which are attributed to the practice of
confession by those who are best aware of the evils
belonging to that practice. On the whole, CathoHc
servants are preferred as far as the mere domestic
work is concerned ; that is, the female servants are
Catholics. But it is not denied that the very safest—
those who are living, and have lived for thirty years,
on good terms with all their neighbours — do feel
safer for having Protestant men-servants. There is
enough of distrust — not of individual neighbours, but
of the tyranny of secret organization — to make even
the securest prefer for men-servants persons who are
out of the reach of such organization.

LETTER II.

WEST or ULSTER— WEEDS— LONDON COMPANIES—
TEMPLEMOYLE AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL.

Augiist 11, 1852
By the time we had left Londonderry two miles be-
hind us, we thought we had seen more weeds in a
quarter of an hour than in any whole day of our lives
before. In every little field of oats — thin, scattered,
stunted oats — there were long rows and wide par-
terres of wild marigold ; a pretty flower enough, but
out of place in a corn-field. As for the turnips, they
were as modest as the violet, hiding themselves under
the shadow of bolder growths of weeds. The wretched
potatoes, black, withering, and offensive, seemed to
have poisoned and annihilated every growth witliin
their boundaries; but in every enclosed pasture the
weeds had their revenge. This is a proud country
for the ragwort. In every pasture, as far as we could
see, it grew knee-high, presenting that golden harvest
which may please the eye of an infant, but which
saddens the heart of a well-wisher to Ireland. The
stranger is assured, as to the marigold, that it is not
a sign of the worst state of the land ; that, when the

ESTATES OP THE LONDON COMPANIES. 9

land is getting exhausted, the marigold comes first,
and after it the poppy. He is told, as to the ragwort,
that it is a sign of the land being good, — that bad
land wiH not grow it : no great consolation, where it
usurps every other growth. It takes up all the potash
in the soil, one is told ; and on it goes, taking up the
potash, for anything that anybody seems to care. In
one case alone we saw pains taken about it : from
a corner of a field two men had removed a heavy
cart-load, which they were going to add to a manure-
heap.

At a distance of five miles from Derry there is a
settlement which looks, from a little way off, neat and
prosperous. That is the beginning of the Grocers'
estates. A few miles further, there is an enclosure
which challenges observation at once. It contains a
plantation, chiefly of fir and larch, drained in a style
which mak^ one ask whom it belongs to. It is the
beginning of the Fishmongers' property. These Lon-
don Companies remember that Westminster Abbey
and Westminster Hall were built with oak from this
county; and they are disposed to enable a future
generation to build immortal edifices of oak from this
district. The outlying fir plantations are only a token
of the interest taken by the Companies in restoring
the woods of Ulster. For some miles forward the
marigold scarcely appears, only peeping out humbly,
low down in the corn; and the ragwort is nearly
confined to tlie fences, — till, once more, both burst
upon us again in full glory, in the neighbourhood of
cottages whose thatch is sinking in or dropping off,

B 3

10 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

and of puddles covered with green slime. AVe are
now on an estate which lies between the lands of two
of the Companies. What we have said of it is enough.
What we saw shows that the influence of the Compa-
nies, great though it be, is not all-powerful in im-
proving the cultivation of the land in their neigh-
bourhood. The people who live under that rotten
tliatch, and beside those green ponds, dwell in sight
of the slated cottages and the heaps of draining-tiles
of the Fishmongers. The agent of the Fishmongers
hopes to live to see every cottage on their estates
slated ; and then, as now, we suppose, men will be
botching their thatch on that wretched intermediate
laud, just as if there was no slate-quarry within an
easy walk.

Seeing these things, certain anecdotes about Irish
tillage recurred to our minds. We remembered hav-
ing heard of the delighted surprise of a farmer who
had scribbled or shovelled his field four inches deep,
and thought he had dug it, at being shown that a
rich loamy soil lay six inches deeper, — a mine of
wealth which he had never opened. We remembered
having heard of the reviving spirits of some despairing
peasants when shown how easily they might raise
cabbages in the place of their perishing potatoes. We
remembered how some who had agreed to try turnips,
and had duly sown their seed, actually cried when
their instructor began thinning the rows, and said
he was robbing them ; and how they got no turnips
bigger than radishes, llcmcmbering and seeing these
things, wo inquired about the state and prospects of

I

TEMPLEMOYLE AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 11

agricultural instruction, and particularly about the
Templemoyle School. The Templemoyle School was
within reach, and we went to see it. Vie wish that
everybody who cares for Ireland would do the same.

This Agricultural Training School was instituted
in 1826 by the North- West of Ireland Agricultural
Society. The land belongs to the Grocers^ Company ;
and that and other companies, and a few of the neigh-
bouring gentry, supported the school till it could
maintain itself. It is now self-supporting; but
great good would arise from its being more generally
noticed — more abundantly visited — and its merits be-
ing more generously acknowledged. A strong inter-
est about it was excited in England by Mr. Thack-
eray's report of it in his ^ Irish Sketch-book;' and
there have been more recent notices of it in reviews
of that book ^d elsewhere ; but it appears to us to
deserve a more steady interest and observation than it
has met with. One asks what Lord Clarendon was
about, that he never honoured Templemoyle with the
slightest notice, while in every other way promoting
the great cause of agricultural instruction in Ireland.
He never came, nor sent, nor was known to make the
slightest inquiry about the institution, during the
whole course of liis government, while exerting him-
self in the most excellent manner to send out instruc-
tors from the National Board and through private
efforts. Perhaps he and others thus paid their com-
pliment to the great companies of Ulster, leaving it to
be supposed that whatever was under the care of the
corporations must necessarilv flourish. But there is

12 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

no kind of effort which is not stimulated by sympathy
— no cause which is not the stronger for apprecia-
tion ; and it might be a benefit to the whole country
if its due place of honour were given to Templemoyle.
Public attention seems to be almost entirely absorbed
by the plan of sending out instructors from the Na-
tional Board. That plan is good, and the service
rendered has been very great ; but the Board farms
are of a much smaller extent than that of Temple-
moyle, which comprehends seventy-two acres ; and the
Teoiplemoyle course of training must be the more
enlarged of the two, in proportion to the superiority
of its field of experiment. The institution has sent
out men who have written valuable agricultural books.
It has sent out surveyors and civil engineers of merit,
masters of agricultural schools, an editor of an agri-
cultural newspaper, and land-stewards and agents,
besides all its farmers and instructors in agriculture.
The ' Quarterly Eeview' has complained of this as a
practical failure, insisting that all the pupils shall be
agricultural instructors, and nothing else, except by
some rare accident. But, whatever may be thought
of this, we have here a proof of the extent and depth
of the education given, — an education wliich enables
the pupils to be not mere common farmers, but scien-
tific managers of the land.

By inquiry, we found the state of the case to be
this, in regard to the missionary view of the institu-
tion. There are beds for seventy pupils; and the
place was overflowing before the famine reduced the
means of the whole farming class. The number now

TEMPLEMOYLE AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 13

is fifty-eight. Since the occupation of a large part of
the missionary field by Lord Clarendon's instructors,
there has been an increased tendency in the Temple-
moyle students to emigrate. No one can wonder at
this, for they must feel themselves better quahfied to
succeed as emigrants than most of their neighbours
who go out ; and they do not like the prospect — so
common for the last few years — of sinking at home.
Now, therefore, during the present rush of emigra-
tion, about one-third of the pupils go with the stream.
Natural as tliis is, it is a pity. The institution is not
intended for the training of emigrants ; but we own
we do not see how it is to be helped, while every class
of the population pelds up a large proportion of its
numbers to the colonies or to the United States. Of
the remaining t^o-thirds, about half are believed to
go home to their fathers' farms, or to settle on one of
their own, or to follow other occupations, while the
rest become, under one name or another, agricultural
missionaries. In 1850 there were three hundred and
two who were cultivating their own or their parents'
farms. To us it appears that these young men are
missionaries of a secondary order. To us it appears
that the scientific^ cultivation of tliree hundred farms
throughout the length and breadth of Ii-eland must
be nearly as efficacious in the improvement of agri-
culture as any amount of instruction that could be
given by lectures and itinerant practice, by the same
number of men. "We must remember how the influ-
ence of a resident improver spreads through his neigh-
bourhood, and how it is deepened and expanded by the

14 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

circumstance of residence. If, therefore, taking the
number of students at sixty -three on the average, and
the course at three years (though it is sometimes four,
and even five), and allowing one-tliird of those who
leave each year to emigrate, we have, as the result of
the Templemoyle training, seven in a year who go
forth through the country as agricultural missionaries,
and seven more to settle down as scientific farmers,
or managers of the land in one way or another. If
this is not approved, or if vexation is felt at a small
sprinkKng of shopkeepers and clerks coming out of
the institution, those who recommend the pupils must
take more care to ensure the devotion of their candi-
dates to agricultural pursuits. The pay, too, is very
low — only £10 a year; and it may easily happen that
a place is occasionally given as a charity, or to some
hopeless youth who has never succeeded elsewhere.
But the very small amount of misconduct — the ex-
treme rarity of expulsion — proves that there cannot
be much of this kind of abuse.

The situation of the establishment is beautiful. The
house stands near to the top of a steep hill, looking
down upon a wooded glen, and abroad over the rich
levels stretching to the Lough, and over the Lough to
the mountains of Donegal and the grand Coleraine
rocks. The path to the front door rises tlu'ougli gar-
den, nursery-ground, and orchard; and behind the
house and offices the land still rises till it overlooks
the whole adjacent country. The soil and aspect
are unfavourable. To the young men it is certainly
the pursuit of farming under dilUculties ; but this is

TEMPLEMOYLE AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. 15

better for them than success coming too easily. The
price given for the land was 10 s. the statute acre, and
the value is now at least doubled. Besides feeding
the whole estabhshment, the produce brings in a
yearly increasing profit. We have said how low is
the payment by the pupils. Yet, within ten years,
there have been additions of new dormitories, an in-
firmary, washing-rooms, a museum of models of farm-
ing implements, an improved cow-house, and an ex-
cellent house for sheep, the introduction of which, with
all modern improvements in the management of them,
is an important new feature in the education given.
The land is divided into nine portions, five of which
aie regularly tilled on the five-shift rotation, and the
other on the four-shift. Every part of the work is,
sooner or later, done by the hands of each pupil, the
only help hired being for the drudgery, which would
be mere waste of time when once learned. From the
first attempt to plough a furrow or set a fence, to the
highest skill in judging of stock at fairs and markets,
the pupils are exercised in the whole of their art.
The art being pursued during one half of the day,
the other half is given to the science. The mathe-
matical master is superintending the studies in school
and class-rooms, wliile the agricultural master is in
the fields and yards with the other half of the pupils.
The cows and pigs are fine, and the sheep a source of
both pride and profit. Lectures on agricultural che-
mistry are given, of course ; and some members of
the establishment visit the great agricultural shows in
aU parts of the kingdom, to keep up with the world

16 LETTERS FROM IRELA^•D.

in the knowledge and use of all discoveries and imple-
ments.

There seems to be nothing wanting, as far as the
visitor can see, but the presence of a matron, or the
occasional visits of ladies, to see to the opening and
cleaning of windows, and some domestic niceties;
and we emphatically declare the encouragement of a
wider notice and appreciation of this highly important
institution a matter of national concern. It would
be renovated and cheered for ever if Prince Albert,
with his interest in agricultural improvement, would
pay it a visit. And why not ? In some one of her
healthful and pleasant cruises, the Queen "will surely,
sooner or later, visit the famous old Derry, to whose
stout heroic loyalty once upon a time she owes her
crown. May she come soon ! and then Prince Albert,
and perhaps the Queen herself, will remember that
Templemoyle is only six miles from Derry, and Avill
go over and see the crops, and the maps, and the mu-
seum, and the joyful students, and will leave certain
prosperity behind them.

17

LETTER III.

THE DERRY AND COLERAINE RAIL^Y AY— PRODUCE AND
TRATriC OF THE DISTRICT— BEArTIFUL SCENERY—
WHAT CAN PUBLIC WORKS DO FOR IRELAND ?

August 13, 1852.
The impression which every day's observation streng-
thens in the traveller's mind is, that tiU the agricul-
ture of Ireland is improved, little benefit can arise
from the large grants which have been, and still are,
made for pubhc works. If pubUc works winch are
designed to open up markets for produce should sti-
mulate the people to the improvement of production,
it will be a capital thing ; but, till some endence of
this appears, there is something melancholy in the
spectacle of a great apparatus which does not seem to
be the result of any natural demand. We saw yes-
terday nearly the whole Line of the intended railway
from Coleraine to Derry. If we had looked no fur-
ther than the line, it would have been an imposing
and beautiful spectacle ; but we saw other things which
sadly marred the beauty of it.

Much of the benefit of this railway will depend on

18 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

whether the Bann river can be made navigable from
Lough Neagh to the ocean. Lough Xeagh supplies
a vast body of water to the beautiful river Bann ; and
its shores ought to supply a great amount of produce.
With railways from Belfast and Carrickfergus meet-
ing at Antrim^ and running round to where the Baim
issues from the Lough^ large districts will be put into
communication with the sea at the north, if only
the difficulty of the bar at the mouth of the Bann can
be got over. Money is granted for building two
piers. Some wise men assure us that they will be
effectual ; wliile other wise men consider the opening
of the navigation to be a hopeless matter. A small
harbour has been made secure for little vessels at Port-
rush; and those who despair of the mouth of the
Bann, wish that something more extended and effec-
tual had been done at Portrush. AYhoever may be
right, and whoever wrong about this, there is to be a
railway from Coleraine to Londonderry : and, as there
is one in progi-ess between Londonderry and Ennis-
kiRen, the circuit will, by the help of existing rail-
ways, be almost complete.

This Coleraine railway was originated, with sanguine
expectations, by a company, a few years ago. Not only
was the traffic expected to be great, but a grand scheme
of reclaiming 20,000 acres of land from Lough Poyle
was connected with it. These 20,000 acres, at a rent
of £3 per acre, were to yield a revenue of £60,000,
on the security of which money to any extent might
be raised. Already however there has been a Go-
vernment grant of £70,000, and the proprietors are

THE DERRY AND COLERAINE RAILWAY. 19

believed to have spent £200,000 of their own, while
there is, of course, no prospect of money coming in
at present, however well the project may answer here-
after. A great sweep was made out over the surface
of Lough Foyle to comprehend the 20,000 acres.
Then, as it was not supposed that the railway could
be strong enough to meet the tides, it was carried
nearer inshore, and an embankment was carried over
the original line for as far as it went. The railw;ay
works proceeded, the embankment has stopped, and it
is understood, though not officially declared, that it
mR not be resumed. If so, the main source of anti-
cipated profit is cut ofiP, and the shareholders' gains
must depend, not on the sale or letting of the re-
claimed land, but on the railway traffic. This must
be vexatious enough to the shareholders, and espe-
cially if what is said be true, that the railway is, after
all, strong enough to have borne the stress of the
outer line of waters.

Before it has well left the Lough, the railway will
receive the flax of the country-people for Coleraine.
The people are cutting the flax at this time, and some
are steeping it, as the traveller'' s nose informs him,
from point to point on his road. As for the growing
flax, a novice might be excused for carrying away
the news that the flax has a yellow flower, and is now
in bloom, so abundantly is the wild marigold inter-
mixed with the crop. Li other fields the lads and
lasses are pulling the flax, — some few skilfully, the
greater number unskilfuUy, — and making their hand-
fuls into sheaves. Others are lavinar them in the

20 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

turbid water, and keeping the bundles down with
stones ; while some, again, are taking the plant out
of tlie ditches, and spreading it to dry. The traveller
is told that various new methods of preparing flax
have been tried, and that the old ways are found to
be the best. Time will show whether they are right
in throwing away the seed altogether, and in spreading
their processes over a period of time which embraces
many risks. If they are right, then the new railway
will carry plenty of flax to Coleraine.

It has been hoped that it would carry plenty of
potatoes, as well as cattle, butter, eggs, and fowls, to
Derry for exportation. The fowls are indeed abund-
ant,— pecking about on the mud-floors of the cottages,
under the shelter of the peat-heap, which is handy to
the fire. The cows are, for the most part, in good
plight, either led about by a child, or tethered in a pas-
ture, as even a single sheep may here and there be
seen to be. We heard of one cow, properly considered
a great marvel, which yielded 174 lbs. of butter per
week — that is, from 37 to 40 quarts of milk daily — for
a considerable time. It is true, she was exhausted,
and had to be killed, after this feat; but there seems
to be little doubt that the cows in this region do flou-
rish, and afford a profit. Hence appears the wisdom
of some of the Companies in gradually abolishing the
small pursuit of weaving, which used to go on in
whole rows of cottages by the roadside, where no
such wretched cabins are now to be seen. The Com-
panies have paid for the emigration of the inhabitants ;
have removed their cabins, and put good gardens in

THE POTATO ROT. 21

the place of them ; and the flax which was woven hero
is now all sent to Coleraine.

And the potatoes — what of them ? Alas ! there
is a dismal story to tell. "Where the stench of the
steeping flax intermits, now comes that of the rot-
ting potatoes. At the point where the new railroad,
coming from the Lough, passes under the bold head-
land of the Coleraine rocks — a noble headland, 1300
feet high — there is a plain, stretching out to the mar-
gin of the waves. It fills up the wide space between
Lough Foyle, the Coleraine rocks, and the sea. We
were told, rather to our surprise, that it is the largest
plain in Ireland. This is the plain to which we owe
the Drummond light. Lieutenant Drummond, en-
gaged in the trigonometrical survey of Ireland, and
desiring to obtain for the base of his triangle the vast
space from this plain to the Scotch islands, and know-
ing that the Paps of Jura are \asible in clear weather
from the crest of the rocks, was stimulated to devise
the most brilliant light that could be had, to shine
from the Scotch to the Irish heights. Hence the in-
vention of the Drummond Hght, — a benefit which,
whether practically great or not, is almost forgotten
in comparison with the more heart-moving services
which that gallant man afterwards rendered to Ireland
at the cost of his life. This plain consists of a soil
which is, throughout, fit to be a valuable manure. It
is called sand, but it is whoUy composed of commi-
nuted shells. It is in great request by some agri-
culturists, who understand their business ; and pota-
toes, grown in breadths which are deeply trenched.

22 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

extend almost to the margin of the tide. The potato-
rot had hardly been known before in this neighbour-
hood. In 1846, and ever since, specimens of failure
were very rare. But this year the visitation has come.
There was scarcely a green patch to be seen yesterday
as we passed over this plain. We need not describe
the mournful spectacle of the people, here and there,
forking up the roots to see if any could be saved,
and elsewhere leaving the whole growth to its fate.
They can hardly be blamed for having planted pota-
toes, so many years of impunity ha\dng appeared to
warrant the venture; but, as to other parts of Ire-
land, it certainly appears as if men had had as broad
a hint as could be well given to leave off staking so
much on a crop which, from some unknown cause,
seems to require a suspension of its cultivation, till
either soil or root shall have become renovated by the
intermission.

Before the railway disappears behind the rocks, it
mW have received, from the inland roads, oats, a little
barley, and less wheat. Then, for a space of some
miles, it can hardly receive any products but fish.
The beauty of the region is so extreme that the
stranger thinks little of anything else. Below the
noble crowning precipices stretches a steep green
slope which melts into the white sand of tlie beach.
In spring this slope is one gigantic primrose-bank,
wherever the woods allow the blossoms to be seen.
Then succeed blue-bells, and the roses of which attar
of roses is made. There is now a perfect -^vilderness
of bushes and trails, clustered with hips, which show

23

what the blossoming must have been. The few houses
have fuchsias growing higher than the eaves ; and
the tall hedges are starred over with the blossoms of
the blue periwinkle. These are the sights wliich the
railway traveller will see, — every garden free from
blight, and something very like an eternal spring
reigning under the shelter of these crags. The m\Ttle
floui'ishes here, as in the south of Devonshire ; and
there is little but the roar of the Atlantic to mark
the presence of winter. Far away on the one hand
stretch the headlands of Donegal, on the other the
ranges of the Giant's Causeway ; while, as we have
said, Scotland is \-isible in clear weather. In every
chasm of the cliffs is a feathery waterfall, whose spray
is taken up and scattered in the sunlight by every
passing breeze. Further on come archways through
the limestone, and tunnels running into the black
rocks. At Coleraine the produce of the salmon-fish-
ery on the Bann will, of course, be received, and more
rural produce from the interior.

But how easy would it be to double or to treble
that produce! The Clothworkers' estates lie near
Coleraine, and really they seem scarcely better than
their neighbours. The absurd gate-posts, like little
round tents — the rusty iron, or broken wooden gates
— the fences which fence out nothing, but nourish
thistles, ragwort, and all seeds that can fly abroad
for mischief — the over-ripe oats, shedding their grain
for want of cutting, wliile the hay is still making —
the barley so cut as to shake it all manner of ways
— the stinking potato-fields — the men coming home

24 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

from the weekly market tipsy and shouting, — the
cabins with windows that will not open, and doors
that apparently will not shut, — ^these are mischiefs
for which nobody in particular may be exactly re-
sponsible, but which make us ask of how much use
railways and harbours and reclamation of land can
be, so long as people cannot bring out its wealth
from the soil which is actually under their feet and
hands. If, as some people hope, the railways \vill
improve the tillage, it will be, as we said before, a
capital thing. Let us hope and watch for it.

25

LETTER IV.

THE LINEN MANUFACTURE— FLAX GROWING AND
DRESSING.

Augtcst 17, 1852.
The linen manufacture is the one only manufacture
which has ever fairly taken root in Ireland. Having
come in when the Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes
sent a crowd of ingenious foreigners into our islands,
and having now attained such perfection that, if only
the patterns were as good as the fabric, the damasks
of Belfast would cover all the royal dinner-tables in
Eui'ope, this manufacture may be regarded as the one
great unmixed good in the industrial aspect of Ireland.
If the population employed in it were not originally,
and are not yet, the Celtic, so much as the descendants
of the Scotch, there seems to be every inclination to
extend it among the inhabitants of other parts of Ire-
land ; and the services of the Celtic cultivators being
required to furnish the flax, the benefits of the manu-
facture are as thoroughly Irish as could be desired.
When Lord Clarendon obtained a grant of £1000 a
year for the Elax Improvement Society of Ireland, it
was under the engagement that the money should

26 LETTERS FEOM IRELAND.

not be spent in Ulster, but wholly in promoting the
growth of flax in the western and southern parts of
the island. It was supposed that Ulster could take
care of itseK, every farmer who chose to grow flax
being near the great market of Belfast, and sure of
selling all that he could possibly raise, if the quality were
good. It is estimated that no less flax is wanted than
the produce of 500,000 acres to supply the demand
of the manufacturer, while not more than 60,000
acres are growing flax in any one year. This means
that an inferior flax is supplied to the United Kingdom
from abroad, while there seems to be no reason why
Ireland should not yield all that is wanted, except
some very few of the finest sorts from Belgium. So
much for the demand.

As the flax imported from Eussia and other coun-
tries is, for the most part, inferior to the Irish, it ap-
pears that the natural advantages for flax- growing in
Ireland must be all-sufficient. Is it a remunerative
crop to the grower? The present eagerness about
flax-growing in England shows that this question is
in the way of being completely answered : and the re-
ports of English flax-growers seem all to agree that,
under proper management, it is about as lucrative
a business — that of flax-growing — as any man can
now follow — short of gold- digging. "\Ye hear of -a
profit of £10, of £18, of £25, per acre, and even a
good deal more, while assured that flax is not an ex-
haustive crop. Now, if this be true, or the half of
it, what a prospect is opened for Ireland ! She is
the special grower of a product of this extraordinary

CULTIVATION OF FLAX. 27

value ; and, with all the advantages of that special
qualification, she may expand — she is even solicited
to expand — her cultivation of flax to eightfold what
it is now, to meet the manufacturing demand of to-
day,— without anticipating the increase which is sure
to take place. It seems as if a resource like this
might fill up an abyss of distress, — as if a harvest like
this might reconcile the cultivators to a surrender
(temporary or permanent) of the treacherous potato.
With these facts (or, at least, authorized statements)
in view, we have observed the flax- grounds all the
way from Londonderry to Belfast ; or rather to within
a few miles of Belfast, for the fog which hung over
the district as we entered it was so dense as to allow
nothing to be seen beyond the road, for some little
distance round the city.

Flax appears to us to stand third, as to extent of
cultivation, among the crops we have seen ; but we
are not certain that turnips may not come before it.
There can be no doubt of oats coming first, and po-
tatoes next. The oat-crop is as good this year as it
can be under such imperfect care as the Irish farmer
bestows. The potatoes are little better than a putrid
mass of waste. As for the flax, the climate and soil
must be suitable, or Irish flax would not bear the
name it does. The first requisite as to the manage-
ment is that the ground sliould be well drained and
subsoiled. The roots of the flax go down two feet,
and they must have air and a loosened soil : tliis they
certainly have not, as a matter of course, or in any
systematic way. Flax should never follow roots im-

c 2

28 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

mediately ; and it should be grown only once iu eight
or ten years, we are told by the experienced ; but there
are some farmers who grow it after potatoes, and
much oftener than once in eight years. The soil
should be pulverized and cleared of weeds, and
levelled till it is Hke a lad/s parterre ; but no soil in
Ireland, as far as we have yet seen, is so treated : and,
not satisfied with leaving the native weeds in all their
rankness, the farmers are tempted by the low price
of Eussian flax-seed to buy it in preference to home-
saved seed, offered even under the highest sanctions,
though the Eiga seed contains invariably a very large
proportion of weeds. The crops should be weeded
when about two inches high, and, as careful foreigners
tell us, once or twice afterwards; but here the flax
crops are, at this moment, as gay with a dozen varie-
ties of weeds as the oats and the pasture-fields. The
lower part of the stalk is thus choked up and dis-
coloured and weakened for want of air and sunshine,
besides the soil being exhausted by the weeds, and the
steeping and dressing injured by their intrusion. And
no less a sum than £300,000 a year is spent in the
purchase of foreign seed, while the farmers of Ulster
lose the whole of their own seed. At the end of the
first ten years of the existence of the Eoyal Tlax
Society, it was computed that the waste, from the
throwing away of the seed, amounted in that time
to £2,000,000. The farmers say that the fibre would
be spoiled if the plant were allowed to ripen its seed ;
that, if pulled at the proper time for the fibre, the
gatheiing of the seed would cost more than it would

CULTIVATION OP FLAX. 29

be worth for the feeding of cattle. The answers to
these objections are of a practical sort. The seed is
advanced enough to ripen of itself, and to produce
excellent crops, if the plant is allowed to grow, not
too long, but till the stalk is two-thirds yellow ; and
if the grower will sell his crop to the preparers, in-
stead of preparing it himself, they will take care of
the seed. These are facts abundantly proved by ex-
perience. It is also proved that one-fifth of the ground
will grow seed to sow the whole; and that if the
grower will not try the more economical plan of saving
all the seed, it would answer better to him to let one-
hfth of his fibre grow too woody than to buy weeds
from Riga. There must be bad management some-
where when Ireland grows flax and loses the seed,
while England is growing flax for the sake of the seed.
Xext comes the pulhng. The ground being too
often uneven, the roots do not come up " square ;"
and, the farmer^s family of all ages turning out to the
work, some of it is ill done, the roots not coming up
"close,"'^ and the stalks of different lengths being laid
together. The steeping is done in pools or ditches.
If the water be soft and favourable, well and good.
If there be not enough of one kind of water, the pro-
duce of the same rood of ground may present as many
different values as there are pools or ditches used.
The process depends on so many accidents that it is
all a chance whether the steeping will take six days
or six weeks. Then comes the spreading, with all
the liabilities of letting the flax he too long, or 7iot
long enough; and then the same risk, all belonging

30 LETTERS FROM IRET.AXD.

to uncertainty of weather, about its standing in the
stook or shock. When the beethng and dressing are
done, and the flax is brought to market, the farmer
finds that he gets Qs. where the patentees of Schenck^s
system get 95., though no farmer sells his best crop
to Schenck's patentees.

Some of this waste, vexation, and loss arise from bad
farming, evidently enough ; but much also proceeds
from the want of division of employments. The time
was when, in England, the farmer^s family prepared,
spun, and wove their own wool and flax, and wore their
own homespun ; and it would be merely a continua-
tion of this old practice — merely an ignoring of the
manufacturing sytem — if the Ulster farmers grew and
prepared their flax for family wear. But they claim
precedence in flax-growing ; they claim to supply the
manufacturers of Belfast who are to weave table-cloths
for all royal dinner-tables ; and if they are to do this,
they must study and obey the requirements of the
manufacturing system. They must learn to see that
it cannot but answer best to them to devote their care
to the improvement of their crop, and to sell it to
establishments where the steeping and other prepara-
tion is done on scientific principles, and with the cer-
tainty which science alone can give.

There are about eighteen establishments under
Schenck's patent in Ireland. The one we saw is in
the neighbourhood of Belfast. The others are scat-
tered over every part of Ireland where flax is grown ;
but the effect they have produced is as yet scarcely
perceptible — so wedded arc the cultivators to their old

CULTIVATION OF FLAX. 31

methods. When the Government grant was obtained
by Lord Clarendon for growing flax in the west
and south, people asked what was the use of it while
the cultivators could have no market for their crops.
The answer was that there must be a clubbing to-
gether to set up scutching-mills, which are reckoned
to save 16s. Sd. per acre over hand-scutching. In
distressed districts however hand-scutching was en-
couraged, for the sake of the increased employment
of labour. As might have been expected, it was found
impossible to continue the business on so false a prin-
ciple. The privileged encroached on their privilege.
The best workers turned out only 6 lbs. per day, and
some no more than 2 lbs. Where the patent process
is fairly set up, a market is provided ; the remunera-
tion becomes a regular trading matter; and, if the
system could be extended to embrace the pri^^leges
offered by the times, a very considerable portion of
Ireland's poverty might be abohshed. At present, as
we have said, scarcely any impression is made on the
flax-growers of Ireland.

Under Schenck^'s patent, — of American origin, and
established nearly four years in the neighbourhood of
Belfast, — the steeping is done in vats, by means of
steam-pipes, and with water of the best quality. The
process occupies from one day to four or five ; but it
can never fail of complete success. The same cer-
tainty attends aU the processes. It was at once found
that £170 worth of labour saved £1200 worth of
seed. That which is ripe enough is sown : the rest
is sold for cattle-food. The first vear nobodv would

32 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

sell the proprietors any flax ; and now they can obtain
it only within a range of eight or ten miles round
Belfast, and they are sure of not obtaining the best.
It is only when the farmer is doubtful of his crop that
he offers it for sale. The second year the proprietors
obtained a good deal, paying for it by the acre. Now
they obtain more still, and buy it by the ton, which
suits them better than having to watch the cropping
of the produce they have bought. But the quality is
so variable, — often from mere unskilfulness on the
part of the grower, — that they long for the time when
they shall be able to make their own requisitions as
to the quahty of the article in which they deal.

The question is — a question of unspeakable im-
portance— will that time come before it is too late
to secure this natural branch of industry to Ireland ?
There are some who fear and believe that other coun-
tries will be too quick for her, and that she will miss
this much of her possible salvation. Look at the
facts again, and say if this be likely. Ireland pays
away £300,000 a year for seed which she merely
wastes at home. She grows flax (on the whole very
badly) on only 60,000 acres; whereas there is a de-
mand, addressed peculiarly to her, for the produce of
500,000 acres. This is no new-fangled product, but
exactly that which has been her own for centuries.
At the same moment with the demand arises a new
and sound method of avoiding the risks and losses
of the old unskilled method of treatment. Under all
this incitement, she has no opponents, but the off'er
of every possible assistance.

CULTIVATION OF FLAX. 33

What follows ? That if she misses her advantage,
the world will say she deserves no pity. It does not
follow that the world will be right in saying so. Some
who look deeper may feel that she is more to be pitied
than ever ; for there must be some dreadful mischief
at work to paralyse action in so plain a case. If such
a painful spectacle should be seen as the flax cultiva-
tion passing from Ireland to some other soil, it will
be owing to the same causes, whatever they may be,
which deprave Irish agriculture generally to a lower
point than can be seen in almost every other country
in Europe. What those causes are, we shall better
understand when we have looked beyond the province
of Ulster,

c 3

LETTER V.

AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT IN ULSTER.

August 18, 1852.
While all Ulster is noisy with outcries and contro-
versies on the subject of tenant-right — while some of
the elections are a public scandal, and political quar-
rels run high — there is a society modestly at work
which, if properly supported, might do more for the
benefit of the population than all the politicians in
the province, with all their din. Professor Hodges,
who fills the amcultural chair in the Queen's CoUesre
at Belfast, is the main support of the Chemico- Agri-
cultural Society of Ulster. He is the society's chemist,
he lectures, and he superintends the preparation of its
journal.

We have given some account of how the tillage of
the province appears to a stranger. We must have
conveyed some impression of the crying need of know-
ledge, of consultation among landowners and farmers,
of union to obtain information about the latest im-
provements, and so on. Bearing this in mind, and
remembering also that this society is universally
])raised where it is noticed at all, — that it sits apart

AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT. 35

altogether from political quarrels, and is allowed on
all hands to be much needed and a pure benefit,
what may be supposed to be the degree of support it
receives ?

Last year's report informs us that the annual sub-
scriptions amounted to £182. 5^. 6^. Well may
English newspapers and Irish advocates describe such
means as " ridiculously small." Dr. Hodges' ' Les-
sons on Chemistry in its application to Agriculture'
is used as a text-book in all the rural schools of the
National Board; he carries on an extensive corre-
spondence with associations, British and foreign ; and
the Journals of this society are known to have given
a great impulse to agriculture in L-eland. One of
the most zealous members is Mr. Andrews, the first
Irish pupil of Mr. Smith of Deanston, and the man
who subsoiled the first bit of Irish ground in 1833.
Yet " some of the larger landed proprietors have not
renewed their subscriptions;" the amount received
for advertisements last year was three guineas, and,
as we have said, the subscriptions amounted to only
£182. hs. Qcl, though sixty-five new members had
joined.

What does this mean ? English men of business
would say at once that the Ulster people do not "oish
for agricultural improvement. And why do they not
wish for it ? Because, as the residents tell a stranger,
it would do them no good. And why ? How should
a better method of tillage do them no good ? To this
there are many answers.

We hear most about old habits. It is an old habit

36 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

of the Irish— even in Ulster, where they say they are
half Scotch — to like division of lands, and not to like
division of labour. The most zealous improvers can
get nothing done thoroughly well that they do not
effect with their own hands. Mr. Andrews himseK
cannot get his corn so stacked as that the ears do not
hang out from the eaves to the base. Every labourer
wants to be doing everything, — if possible on his own
account ; and he stands, in comparison with the Lin-
colnshire labourer, like the old nail-maker described
by Adam Smith, who forged every separate nail, in
comparison with the nail-cutter of the present day,
who can supply more in a few hours than our whole
nation formerly could in many months. The great
Companies have steadily set their faces against a sub-
division of farms which should bring back the old
evil of every tenant being a Jack-of-all-trades on a
deteriorating patch of ground ; but it needs to be on
the spot to learn what difficulty they have in carrying
out tlieir own steady determination. The agent finds
that where the tenant and his sous cannot divide the
land, they secretly divide the produce; it is only by
a painful interference with family arrangements, that,
in certain cases, a virtual subdivision of farms can be
prevented. Tenants who would do this have not
attained to any desire for improvement in the science
and practice of agriculture. Tliese are the men who
ask what chemistry can possibly have to do with their
business; and who hold, with regard to the land,
that "whatever is is best."

Such men would however be displaced in a trice

AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT. 37

by better farmers, if there were not obstacles to men
becoming better farmers. The obstacles are, that, in
the present state of the law, the tenant has no lease,
or none that he can depend on ; he has often no capi-
tal, being stripped of it by the process of entering
upon his farm; and his pohtical have been, till re-
cently, no less striking than his legal discourage-
ments. The difficulty of obtaining vahd leases from
the owners of encumbered estates in Ireland has been
fatal to the good cultivation of land. In Scotland
the law gives the priority to a farming lease over every
other claim whatever ; and Lothian farmers would as
soon think of squatting as of sitting down on any
farm without the security of a long lease, — of nine-
teen years at the shortest. They will have nothing
to do with leases of lives, because their operations
proceed on a basis of calculation and foresight; and
they bar accidents, as far as men of business can.
When they are sure of their nineteen, or thirty-one, or
more years, up rises their tall chimney ; their steam-
engine begins to pant, their subsoil to come up, their
stagnant waters to run off, their money to disappear
in the soil, and their hopes to stretch forward over a
score or two of years, and embrace a compensating
average of seasons. Their land becomes a perfect
food manufactory ; a perfect treat to the eye of the
veriest old square-toes, who fidgets at the sight of a
weed, and cannot sleep for the thought of a hole in a
fence. If the landlord thinks it right to guard against
the exhaustion of the land during the last years of the
lease, this is managed by simply prescribing the course

38 LETTEES FROM IRELAND.

of cultivation during those years. But the ordinary
case is, that the relation answers too weD to both par-
ties to allow either to wish to part, and in that case
it is the tenant's interest to keep up the quality of
the land tlu-oughout the period. Yery different is the
case of the Irish tenant. During all the long period
that estates have been growing more encumbered, it
has cost him more and more to ascertain the validity
of a lease, till he gives the matter up. The law has
given the preference to every claimant over him ; so
that, after all his pains, the mortgagee might at any
moment step in between him and his landlord, and
claim his farm. And then, up to 1832, a sort of
honour was paid to tenants for lives above tenants for
terms of years, the first being admitted to the fran-
chise, and the other class being excluded from it. All
this is now^ rectified : but the prejudice in favour of
the chance tenure remains for awhile. In 1S32 the
franchise was extended to leaseholders for terms of
years; and in 1850 the better principle was intro-
duced of proceeding on the value of the holding, in-
stead of regarding the form of contract between land-
lord and tenant. But tlie notion of the superior dig-
nity of a tenancy for lives is not worn out yet ; and
thus, even where leases exist, the least secure kind
arc preferred to those which admit of steady calcula-
tion and foresight. Agricultural science and art are
not likely to be very ardently pursued amidst such a
state of afiairs. A tenant is not very likely to lock up
his capital in buildings, and sow it in the soil, when he
cannot reckon on remaining long enough to recover it.

AGRICULTURAL IMPROVEMENT. 39

But he seldom has capital. A Scotch landowner
takes care to ascertain that the candidate for his farm
has the means to do it justice. The Irish candidate
may perhaps present himself with a handful of money,
when he applies for the land; but the outgoing
tenant is sm-e to strip him of it by claims for improve-
ments. In Ireland it is the tenant who builds the
dwelling and everything else : the landlord lets the
bare land. The outgoing tenant is under the strongest
temptations to lay on his charges well. TTe are all apt
to over-estimate our own doings and our own posses-
sions— very honestly. Every old lady who has house
property chafes at any mention of deterioration, and
estimates her property liigher, instead of lower, every
year. Much more may the outgoing tenant overrate
the value of what he has done and spent on the farm
which he mourns over leaving ; and the intense com-
petition for farms removes all check upon him. Ea-
ther than miss the farm, candidates will vie with each
other in paying _his price ; and the successful compe-
titor enters, spending his capital upon his predeces-
sor's so-called improvements, so as to have no means
left for instituting any of his own. And he cannot
borrow capital for the conducting of his business, as
the Scotch farmer and every other man of business
may. In the hope that some remedy for this hard-
sliip will soon be provided, we may content ourselves
with saying now, that the law surrounds the Irish
tenant with such difficulties, that he not only loses
commercial credit by proposing to conduct his busi-
ness with borrowed capital, but it may cost as much

40 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

pains, expense, and uncertainty, to olfer or obtain se-
curity for a loan of £50, as to ascertain the title of a
large estate. How would a Scotch farmer, or a Man-
chester manufacturer, or a London merchant, get on
with his business, if he were thus precluded from
raising the means for carrying on his operations ?

And who can wonder at the depressed condition
of agriculture under laws, customs, and habits of
mind like these ? Where is good tillage to come from,
and what is to be its reward, under so thankless a
system ? It seems very creditable, considering all this,
that sixty-five new members should have joined the
Chemico-Agricultural Society last year. It alibrds
good promise of what the desire for improvement may
become in the days of safe leases and command of
farming capital. And these days may not be far ofi'.
The Attorney-General for Ireland has declared his
intention of proposing a reform analogous to that of
the Scotch law of eighty years ago, — a reform by which
the power of secure leasing shall be largely extended,
and by which a lease shall have priority over an en-
cumbrance, instead of the reverse. Then the world
may have an opportunity of seeing whether there are
natural causes which prevent the agriculture of Ire-
land from being as good as that of the Lothians. At
present the fields in many parts of Ulster are but too
Hke the crofts of the highlands and islands of Scot-
land.

41

LETTER YI.

IRELAND DYING OF TOO :\nJCH DOCTORING— THE
"TENANT RIGHT" QLTISTION.

August 20, 1852.
There is something very striking, and not a little
pathetic (to a stranger, at least), in the complaints of
the suffering Irish that they are neglected, — that a
Httle more law would save them, if they could only
get it, but that the Imperial Parliament will not make
laws for Ireland ; while, all the time, the observer sees
that the woes of Ireland arise, to a very great extent,
from overmuch law. In the days of the Eepeal agi-
tation every repealer had visions of getting a law for
this, that, or the other object, never doubting that,
in the first place, he should get the desired law from
the Irish parliament, and that, in the next, the law
would do all he wanted. It never entered his head
that he was pining under too many specifics already ;
and that his welfare would be found, if at all, in
committing himself to general laws, through a release
from those which were impoverishing his life in all
directions. He was like the hypochondriac, who
thinks he wants more physic, and again more ; where-

42 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

as what he needs is to " throw physic to the dogs/'
and commit himself to the fresh air, cold water, and
cheerful sunshine, which are shed abroad for all. It
is not always easy, or even possible, to draw a sharp
line of distinction between general laws of society, and
those which are special ; and, again, between the spe-
cial laws which are rendered still necessary by former
states of society, and those which may be consi-
dered done with, and therefore ready to be abolished.
But there is one thing quite certain, and that is, that
no new special law should be made without well-as-
certained occasion — without occasion so decided as to
command the assent of nearly the whole of the think-
ing and informed portion of society. If this be ad-
mitted, what ought to be done about this great ques-
tion of Tenant Eight in Ireland ?

Few of us can forget that when O'Connell found
the repeal movement getting past his management,
he allowed the people to anticipate whatever blessed
consequences they chose from the acquisition of re-
peal; he always said, in a general way, that when
they had got repeal they could get anything else they
liked. AYhat they most wanted was " fixity of te-
nure;" so they asked him whether repeal would give
them fixity of tenure, and he said it would. There
is no doubt that the popular meaning of the phrase
was that every man who held a bit of land should hold
it for ever — himself and his posterity after him — on
the payment of a certain rent, when the seasons allowed
him to pay. Before Lord Devon's Commission, the
"almost universal topic of complaint" was the " want

TENANT RIGHT. 43

of tenure/' as the witnesses expressed their trouble.
O'Counell has long been in his grave ; the Repeal
agitation has died away ; Lord Devon's Commission
is now only occasionally quoted ; but we find Ulster
ringing with cries about tenure, and, among other
cries, we find one for " fixity of tenure,'' which the
poorer cultivators beheve to be uttered by their best
friends. Let no one hastily suppose that fixity of
tenure and security of tenure mean the same thing.
As the stranger sees the matter, security of tenure
must be obtained by doing away with a good deal of
law ; but fixity of tenure would require new law, and
a terrible deal of it.

There are some who desire that the proceeds of all
the lands should be lodged in the hands of some
central administration; and that, after aE pubhc ob-
hgations are discharged, the rest of the fund should
be distributed among those who tilled the ground.
We need not do more than state this opinion in pass-
ing. Another plan, more extensively talked about,
is that of converting the L-ish agriculturist into a pea-
sant-proprietor, by transferring to him the ownership
of the land, subject to a fixed rent. There are various
ideas about providing for the security of the rent ; but
the main point of the whole measure is to be, that the
transference of the land shall be made as difficult as
possible. There may be little use in pointing out to
those who would propose such a scheme as this that
it is simply a confiscation of property. They must
either have got over such a scruple, or have some
plan to propose about compelling the owners to sell

44 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

their land to some who would submit to hold nominal
property on such terms. It may be more to the pur-
pose to remind these advocates of fixity of tenure, that
the great evil to be dealt with is the badness of the
tillage ; and that, by universal agreement, this unpro-
ductiveness is above everything owing to the difficulty
in the transfer of land, which obstructs agricultural
improvement. Once make the peasant-proprietor ir-
removeable — once place him beyond the. reach of sti-
mulus to learn, and improve and bestir himself, and
what a perspective of misery stretches before him and
all who can be affected by him ! What a tribe of
children and grand-children is swarming on the bit
of ground intended to support a single couple ur
family ! How, as means diminish, the land becomes
impoverished, till the whole concern goes to ruin al-
together ! The Flemish or Saxon peasant-proprietor
is the bond fide owner of the land he lives on. He has
not only fixity of tenure with a certain rent for ever,
but the soil is his very own, as the children say ; and
it requires all the complacency and affection which at-
tend the absolute possession of property in land to
enable the patient drudging Pleming, with his neat-
ness and his accuracy, and his long-established pas-
sion for independence, to rear his family first, and
then so to chspose of them as to preserve liis little
estate entu'e. We need spend no space in showing
what arc, in comparison, the chances of the Irish
peasant.

Next comes the scheme of which so much has been
lieard in Parliament and out of it — the scheme of a for-

I

TENANT RIGHT. 45

matioii, under legal sanction, of a tribunal, appointed
by landlord and tenants, with the resource of an um-
pire, for arranging the terras of the letting of land,
and especially for determining the value of the im-
provements made, and to be left by the tenant. The
short answer given by the landlord party is, that they
do not wish it ; they do not choose to admit any in-
terference between themselves and their tenants. If
the case of the landlords were perfectly simple, nothing
could be more conclusive than their reply. If they
came into the market, Hke sellers in general, to seU
the use of their land to some one who wanted to buy
that use, no third party would be wanted here, any
more than in any other transaction of sale and pur-
chase. But, in such a case, the question of tenant right
— any question of tenure — could hardly have arisen at
all. There is a complication and embarrassment, which
has occasioned the proposition of a third party to the
business ; but it does not follow that the remedy will
be found in legalizing a third party at all. While
everybody seems bent on adding to the complication
— on heaping more law on the mass which is already
squeezing its vital juices out of the ground — it strikes
a stranger that an Irishman here and there is probably
right in proposing to undo some of this comphcation,
to take off some of this incubus of law.

The poor Irish say that the landowners made the
laws to suit their own purposes. This is very true ;
that is, the early law-makers in all countries were
landowners, and, as a matter of course, and without
meaning any particular harm, they made the laws to

46 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

suit themselves. The poor Irishman now wants his
turn : he wants the chance to make some laws to suit
himself and his class. But that would be neither wise
nor good. Better set about abolisliing such as are
hurtful of the landlords' laws. One of the most hurt-
ful is that by wliich the existing owner of the land
is prohibited from entering into leasing obligations
which shall bind his successor. We have said enough
before about the contrast between the Scotch method
of leasing and the Irish practice of yearly tenancy. Free
the Irish owner from his inability to grant leases for
long terms ; free him from his inabihty to charge his
estate with farm-buildings and improvements, to be
paid for by the extension of the rent over a sufficient
term of years; free him from the inability to pledge
his estate for a due compensation for the tenants' im-
provements; release the landowner from these tram-
mels, and he will be in a condition to make a bargain
with a tenant for their mutual advantage. The land-
owner is surely sufficiently punished for his ancestors'
selfishness in law-making, — punished by his own re-
strictions before his posterity ; punished in being un-
able to meet his tenants like a free man ; punished in
seeing his land deteriorate from one five years to an-
other. It will not mend matters to punish him fur-
ther (if it could be done) by subjecting him forcibly
to' the orders of a tribunal who should hardly leave
him even the nominal owner, certaiidy not the master,
of his own estate.

There is no question of the fact that the practice of
tenant-right in Ulster has been a good thing, — good

TENANT RIGHT. 47

for the cultivation of the soil. If the tenant could
not obtain the security of a lease, he has obtained the
next best thing he could get — the custom, sanctioned
by the landlords and their agents, that his improve-
ments, from the dwelling-house he built to the last
manure he put into the ground, should be paid for
by his successor. In the confidence of this repayment
he has tilled his land better than tenants in other parts
of Ireland have done. But when changes arise — when
the tenants improvements become depreciated in value
(Hke a merchant^'s stock under a commercial crisis), and
he calls upon his landlord to lower his rent because
the rent was calculated in proportion to the former
value of his tenant-right, then comes the quarrel, as
all Ulster has felt for two years past. Some land-
lords have reduced their rents, and largely; others
have declined, never having been aware, they say, that
the custom of tenant-right could lower rent. There
is no way of settling the dispute through the dispas-
sionate intervention of law ; for the law has restricted
the owner from making tenant right contracts with
his tenants otherwise than tacitly. The consequences
of this loose method of transacting business so import-
ant, and of turning into a sort of clandestine arrange-
ment the terms on which depends the smaU amount
of agricultural superiority which prevails in Ulster,
are that landlord and tenant are now at strife on the
most fatal subject about which men can quarrel in
Ireland ; and multitudes who know no better are cry-
ing out for all manner of new laws to coerce the land-
lord, while he would be but too happy to do what is

48 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

best for both parties, if only he were disencumbered
of that heavy armour of law, under which he cannot
stir hand or foot, to help liimself or anybody else.
When men are allowed to manage their existing pro-
perty by the use of their present wits, it is sure to be
well managed; as long as they are compelled to treat
it according to the wits of former centuries, the whole
affair must be a sad jumble. Let the Scotch rule be
admitted in Ireland — the rule that the first object is
to secure the productiveness of the soil — and we shall
see a common ground provided, on which owners and
tenants can traffic. We shall see long leases, land-
lords' improvements in loving company with those of
the tenant, rich fields, full barns, and rising planta-
tions, with no smoke of the assassin's blunderbuss
curKng among the trees.

49

LETTER YII.

HOW IRELAND IS TO GET BACK ITS WOODS.

August 23, 1852.
We have had the pleasure of seeing trees once more
— real woods ; and not merely such young plantations
as the Companies have made in Ulster. Till we were
passing through woodland again, enjoying the cool
light as it came tempered through a screen of beechen
foliage, we were not fully aware of the barrenness of
the country we had traversed. Erom the time we had
left the Coleraine rocks, we had scarcely seen a clump
of well-grown trees. On the high lands of the coast
near the Giant's Causeway, no one would look for
woods; but, turning inland from those heights, for
miles and miles over hill and dale there was nothing
to be seen but the brown, green, or yellow surface of
heath, root-crops, and harvest-fields. Some of the
slopes about the noble Eairhead show young planta-
tions of larch ; and the romantic valleys in which lie
Cushenden and Cushendall have some well-wooded
nooks and recesses. After that the dearth of trees is
really sad, even as far as Lord Eoden's property, near
Dundalk. If one asks why, the answer is that trees

D

50 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

will not grow in Ireland. Nobody can believe this
who gives a moment^ s thought to the subject. Trees
grow very well wherever resident proprietors like to
live under the shelter of woods, and wherever estates
are kept in the hands of proprietors. Trees grew very
well when there was a good trade in timber and staves.
Trees grew very well when miles of forest were de-
stroyed to dislodge outlaws. Trees must certainly
have grown very well before the growth of the bogs ;
for the base of a bog is an almost continuous layer of
forest trees. Lord Eoden^s trees grow very well, and
Lord Downe's, and the Duke of Leinster's. Ireland
was certainly once covered, to a considerable extent,
with forests ; and we hope that there will be planting
enough in time to come to prove that trees will grow
in Ireland, much as they do in other green islands.

Trom the time that the Carlingford mountains come
into view, on the journey from Belfast to Dublin, the
scene becomes gay and smiling for an extent of many
miles. Some really good wheat-crops are seen here
and there. The pastures are as slovenly as possible ;
but there are fields of well-weeded turnips occasion-
ally, and even two or three of unspoiled potatoes.
We remarked here, and also further south, that where
the potatoes were worst the poppies flourished most.
In some cases, where the potato-stalks had almost
vanished in black decay, poppies and other weeds
seemed to usurp the whole field. We are far from
drawing a hasty conclusion that exliaustion of the soil,
such as is marked by the presence of poppies, is the
cause of the potato-rot; for we know that the best

IRISH WOODS. 51

tillage has failed to avert the evil; but it is worth
notice that we have repeatedly seen a field of potatoes
yet green and promising, between well-kept fences,
and free from weeds, parted only by that fence from
a decayed expanse where cattle were going in and out
over the hedge, where slimy water stood in the ditch,
and the poppy, the marigold, and long purples made
the ground as gay as a carpet.

On approaching Dundalk, Lord Eoden's woods
present a fine background to the yellow oat and wheat
fields: and the opening of avenues from the road to
church, or house, or river, is a refreshment to the eye
after the coast-road of Antrim and the bleachfields
south of Belfast. Yet more smiling was a subsequent
day's journey which led us through the great plain of
Kildare. The heavy wheat-crops and rich oat-fields
made us feel that we were rapidly going southwards ;
and on the further side of Athy the belts of woodland,
extending for miles, reminded us amusingly of the
assurance we had so lately received, that wood would
not grow in Ireland. We asked how the large oaks,
the rows of elms, the spreading ash and beech, came
to be there ; and we were told that Lord Downers
woods were carefully kept up round his mansion (as
we saw by driving through the park), and that the
Duke of Leinster is a good landlord.

No doubt he is a good landlord ; and no doubt a
good landlord has some power over the growth of
wood on his estates. But there are facts open to the
knowledge of all, which show that the landlords are
not responsible for the decay of wood in Ireland —

D 2

52 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

nor the tenants either. It is easy to say that men
are lazy; that Irishmen are particularly lazy; that
people will not look forward ; that the sale of wood
stripped the land, and that nobody remembered to
plant in proportion to the felHng ; that, as wood be-
came too scarce for fuel, men took to peat; and that
there is so much peat, that men don't care about wood ;
that they are so accustomed to see Ireland bare, that
they would not know their own country if they saw it
wooded. These things may be facts, but they are not
reasons. We are still unsatisfied as to the why of the
case. We know that it is a positive pleasure to the
landowner to plant ; and to the tenant too, in a minor
degree. We know that it is quite a peculiar enjoy-
ment to those who are concerned with land to put in
seedhngs and saplings, and shelter them, and foster
them, and admire their growth at six years old,
and begin to enjoy the profits of thinning after that
time, and reckon complacently the incomings from
year to year, and the permanent value added to the
estate by means so cheap and easy and pleasant as
planting. If, as Sir Eobert Kane tells us, during all
the consumption of wood, while there was still any to
fell no one planted, there must have been a reason for
it. When we consider what would have been the
difference in the resources of Ireland now if it had
been a well-wooded instead of a bare country, it appears
that the reason must be a very strange and a very
stringent one.

Why tenants-at-will, or on a lease of lives, should
not incur the trouble and expense of planting, is

IRISH WOODS. 53

obvious enough. By the law, as we have seen before,
the improvements go with the land, and the tenant has
no claim for compensation. According to the com-
mon law, the tenant cannot fell trees, because he is
entitled only to their fruit and shade, and the land-
lord cannot fell them, but by express agreement, be-
cause the tenant is entitled to their fruit and shade.
Even the power which the tenant once had, of felling
what wood he wanted for repairs, was taken away by
a statute passed in the Irish Parliament a few years
before the Union. The certainty of the total disap-
pearance of woods under a system like this was so
clear, that an act was passed in 1766, by which the
property of the trees planted was vested in the tenant
who planted them; but then, this tenant must have
a lease of Hves renewable for ever, or for above twelve
years unexpired. The much larger class of tenants,
with short leases or none at all, were left where they
were. Another act gave further scope about felling
to the smaller class of tenants, without affecting the
larger. By this latter act, passed in 1784, the tenant
who had more than fourteen years of his lease before
him might dispose of his own trees as he chose, if he
had registered them by affidavit within twelve months
of planting them. Considering the trouble and ex-
pense of this registering, and the small number of
tenants included under the permission, it is not very
wonderful that after seventy years from the passage of
that act, Ireland is stiU the bare country it is.

And how does the law work with res^ard to the
favoured class of tenants? There is a storv on

54 LETTERS FROM IRELAZsD.

record which opens a curious scene to us. A tenant
on a long lease in a northern county planted exten-
sively, and registered his trees, in comphance with the
law. He believed them to be his own, and loved
them accordingly. He sheltered them, fostered them,
and gloried in them ; and they grew for a long course
of years. He paid rent for the ground they grew on
— and he did not grudge it, for he believed he was
growing a good property for his children. The time
came for a renewal of his lease. There was no diffi-
culty about that : both parties were willing to con-
tinue their relation, and the terms were readily agreed
upon. But then it came out that the trees could not
be made the property of the tenant for a future term.
The only lease which the law allowed the landlord to
give was one by wliich the tenant was subjected to
severe penalties for cutting a switch off any one of the
trees he had planted, and for whose standing-room he
had paid rent all these years. Either the trees must
go with the land, and become the landlord^'s property,
or the landlord must, by an act of liberality, purchase
the trees ; or the tenant must fell them before the ex-
piration of his lease — that is, in a few weeks. The
landlord was grieved. It was not convenient to him
to buy the trees, as an act of generosity. He could
not legally give them to the tenant, for that would
be alienating so much of the value of the estate. The
tenant could not believe this. He could not credit
that such could be the state of the law ; and he na-
turally supposed that the landlord wanted to make
the trees liis own by delay. The man waited till the

IKISH WOODS. 55

last day that he could call the trees his own ; then he
called in everybody from far and near to help him ;
and the woods were felled and removed before night,
amidst the curses of the peasantry on the landlord's
name. They knew nothing about the law : they saw
an active improver desperately cutting down his own
beloved woods, to prevent their becoming his land-
lord's property ; and it would not have been easy to
convince them that the landlord had no desire to
possess them. In the Appendix to the Report of
Lord Devon's Commission, there is a narrative very
like this, except that it ended more happily. The
tenant was a well-informed man, who knew that his
landlord was not to blame; and it does not appear
that he cut down his trees. But when asked whether
it is likely that he should plant any more, "No," he
says, " I may grow furze, or heath, or brambles, but
I won't grow timber."

It is sad to see Ireland thus stripped of her ancient
resources. It is like seeing the disappearance of the
furniture of a sinking house. Not only is there pre-
sent poverty, but an exhaustion of future comforts.
Difficulty and embarrassment may be got through,
but the recovery from barrenness is so hard ! The
woods of Ireland have to be re-created ; and how, if it
is nobody's interest to plant, and there is difficulty and
expense at the very outset ? The suggestions made
by those who know best are, that if there be registra-
tion, it should be made to secure a property of such
duration to its proper owner for a longer term than
the current lease ; and that the law should give the

56 LETTERS FROM IRELA^^).

property in woods to the occupier, as the supposed
planter, in the absence of any declaration or arrange-
ment to the contrary. Thus it would become the in-
terest of the tenant to plant, as it is usually the inter-
est of the proprietor that he should. If the proprietor
has any objections or special wishes about the matter,
he can arrange his terms in giving his lease. If the
island is ever to be re-clothed, and to begin to accu-
mulate a new capital of forest timber, it must be by
some such alteration in the law as this ; for nothing
can be done while the parties interested are kept in a
position of common and relative incapacity which
would be ludicrous if it were not far too sad for a
joke.

57

LETTER VIII.

LEINSTER— IRISH INDUSTRY— RELIGIOUS FEUDS.

August 26, 1852.
Bishop Berkeley would hardly hold to his notion of
the constitution of the Irish people, as regards their
repugnance to work, if he could now come back, and
give a fair study to Irish industry at home and abroad.
He set it down as a fact, that in Ireland " industry
is most against the natural grain of the people,^' and
theorized to his own satisfaction on their being "partly
Spanish and partly Tartars," and indolent, in virtue of
both descents. If he could revisit his earthly haunts,
he would find, in his American province, for instance,
Irishmen working as well as men need do, and grow-
ing as rich as men need be ; and at home he would
probably find men, women, and children much like
what they are elsewhere, working well when they en-
joy pay and hope, and dawdling over their business
when hungry and discouraged. "Why and how,"
has been repeatedly said to us since we entered the
country, — " why and how should our labourers work
well while they are so ill paid ? Let the truth be
plainly stated, that our people are underpaid, or it

D 3

58 LETTEBS FROM IRELAND.

may be ever so long yet before we learn that it an-
swers best to the employer to give good wages." We
are willing to state plainly the Kttle we have as yet
seen and learned about the quality of popular labour.

Three things are very striking to us under this head
— the heartiness of the labour where men are well paid,
— the languor of the labour where people are ill paid,
and the toil that people will undergo, under the sti-
mulus of hope, even where the gains are very small.
We have seen Irishmen working, with every muscle
and every faculty, in an establishment where the work
must be well done, where every man is paid according
to his merits, and where the wages are from 85. to 50<s.
per week. We have seen men and women lounging,
staring about them, and moving slowly (when they
moved at all), over outdoor work, the pay for which
was I5. a day for the ablest men, and M. for the in-
ferior men and the women. We have seen women
bending over their embroidery, as they do all day long,
and from week to week, inlying their needles without
respite, in the hope of making more than the ordinary
M. a-day. We have learned that in the neighbour-
hood of Dubhn women will walk five Irish miles for
fruit, and walk all the rest of the day to bring it back
and sen it, and be well pleased if they get l.:y. a-day —
satisfied if they get M. There seems to be no room
for a theory of constitutional indolence here.

And so we thought from as much as we could see
in passing of the harvest-\vork in the plain of Kil-
dare, and in a portion of Queen's County, last week.
What we saw that day certainly surprised and gratified

IRISH INDUSTRY. 59

US, after what we had heard of the superiority of til-
lage, and of the quality of labour, in Ulster. We saw
the best crops that have come under our notice thus
far in Ireland, with the exception of two or three
favoured spots ; and the reapers and binders seemed
hearty about their business. They were, to be sure,
a strange-looking set of mortals, as we passed com-
pany after company of them in the yellow sunset light ;
the women hung round with rags that it was a marvel
to see and a mystery to understand ; and the men, some
gaunt, some stunted, some with flaming red beards,
some vnih shaggy black locks ; all bare-legged and all
ragged. But they had been working well, and the
cabins they were returning to (such of them as were
residents) are, according to all sound testimony, a very
great improvement upon the dwellings of the labourers
of forty years ago ; cleaner without and within, more
light and airy, and decent in every way.

So much improvement having taken place from na-
tural causes, in spite of singular troubles and difficul-
ties, there would be every hope of an accelerated pro-
gression if natural causes could work freely. It was as
lately as 1845 that the Report of the Land Occupation
Commission declared the condition of the labouring po-
pulation to be stationary or worse, while that of the
farming class had improved. Through the horrors of
famine, and the perils of the emigration of thousands of
the employing class, the condition of the labourer has
improved and is improving. But now, just when good
men's hopes are rising, occurs a difficulty, sorrow, and
danger which there is no seeing the end of. A new

60 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

fierceness is infused into the religious strifes of the coun-
try. There is no use now in entering upon any discus-
sion about how this fresh exasperation arose. There is
no use now in inquiring whose fault it is. " It must
needs be that offences come; but alas! for those by
whom they come." It might be inevitable that new
and more deadly struggles between the two churches,
and among all churches, should occur ; but, for our
part, we had rather have cut off our right hand, and
have been smitten dumb, than have written or spoken
— as premier, priest, parson, or whatsoever else — a
single sentence that could tend to exasperate the re-
ligious hatred which is now making Ireland a disgrace
to the Christian name.

We have been wondering how much is known in
England of the subject which is exciting the deepest
interest here — the rapid course of conversion to Pro-
testantism in the West. We are told that a popu-
lation of 13,000 has been added to the Protestant
church (the evangelical section of it) quite recently,
on the west coast. We may have more to say about
this when we have been there ; and till then, we will
say no more of it. Our present business with this
question is as it affects the employment and condition
of the labourer — the distribution and recompense of
labour.

The last report of the Society for Protecting the
Rights of Conscience lies before us. It contains let-
ters which bear so late a date as the middle of last
June. The iVi'chbishop of Dublin is its president,
and its office-bearers are persons whose testimony

THE PEOTESTANT CONVERTS. 61

would be regarded with respect by the whole of so-
ciety. The object of the association is to extend sup-
port (which means nothing more than bare mainte-
nance) to poor Protestant converts, who have become
the objects of priestly vindictiveness. A good deal of
money has been raised, but it is speedily exhausted,
and more is urgently requested. The Archbishop him-
self would excuse us and anybody for looking upon
this business with some suspicion at first. He is a
political economist, as well as a church dignitary ; and
he would commend, rather than censure, any reluc-
tance to espouse a scheme by which a charity fund is
applied to a creation of employments in favour of pro-
fessors of a particular faith. He is no doubt aware
that in cases of religious quarrel there are always igno-
rant and selfish persons who suppose there is some-
thing to be got by a new theological profession, and
who try to get it. Perhaps he may know of certain
parents of famiKes who have applied to the clergyman
to inquire what they shall get if they come to church
with their seven, or their five, or their ten children.
He knows enough of this aspect of the question not
to disapprove of an inquirer^s looking closely into the
matter, before giving his sympathy to this kind of
movement. He may also be aware that it takes some
time for EngUsh people to become able to believe what
the conduct of a Catholic priest in Ireland may be.
It was in a somewhat antagonistic mood of mind that
we took up this httle report : but before we had done
with it, we saw that there is really no choice for poHtical
economists, or anybody else, as to what shall be done.

&Z LETTERS FRO:jr IRELAND.

If the people are to be anything but mere slaves of
the priests, and if, being free, their lives are to be
saved, they must be employed and fed by their fellow-
members of the Church. It is a sad and a mischievous
necessity; but a necessity it appears to be. There
seems to be no doubt that the converts spoken of in
this report are hond fide converts, and that they have
made, and are making, very severe sacrifices for the
sake of their new faith. There is not the least appear-
ance of anything of the nature of a bribe having been
offered in any case; on the contrary, the funds are
insufficient to afford the merest rescue from starvation
to numbers who would at once be provided for and
favoured if they would go back under the yoke of the
priest. In one district, no one of 800 converts has
ever obtained one single day^s work from any CathoKc
farmer or landowner ; and the only alternative is work
afforded by the society or the workhouse. While the
converts were receiving 6^. a-day at farm-work and
frieze-making, their Catholic neighbours were earning
from 10^. to \8. M. In another district Protestant
fishermen were not allowed to enter Catholic boats.
Even when the owner would have employed a mixed
crew, the priest prohibited it, and was obeyed. The
priest went further, and told a CathoKc owner of a
boat that he would incur the curse of every priest
for ever if he did not dismiss two of his best men.
Catholics, because they had worked for a Protestant
employer; and the men were dismissed accordingly,
tliough engaged for the season. In such cases there
is nothing to be done, apparently, but to buy boats

RELIGIOUS FEUDS. 63

and nets, and employ the outcasts. This has been
done at one place on the coast, where the priest finds
means to send a waverer to America, and where, while
the priest has taken 30^. from a woman for blessing
her sick cows, the converts are content with Qd. a-day,
and release from the tyranny of the priest. One wishes
however that the bodily release could go along with
the spiritual. We read, in this report, a case wherein
the priest was not content with persuading the land-
owner to turn out a family from their cottage if one
boy continued to go to church, but condescended to
lacerate the boy's face with his nails, and to lash him
with his whip, threatening him with a worse whipping
if he entered the church again. In' cases like these,
there seems no choice but to invent employments, and
tamper with the natural course of industry and its
rewards.

"When we go into some of those parts we shall endea-
vour to learn what are the state and prospects of indus-
try amidst these perturbing forces. Meantime, we are
of opinion that there is little to choose between the Ca-
tholic and the Protestant temper — taking society all
round. No priests in the country can be more ferocious
in their language than, for instance, a host of the shop-
men of Dublin — Protestants from Ulster. These young
men came from the north, often sadly ignorant —
scarcely knowing how to read and write. The shops in
the Irish towns open late, and close very early — at 6 or
7 o'clock. Too many of these young men spend their
evenings in idleness, probably at the public-house;
or, if reading, knowing of nothing better than a news-

64 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

paper, as uewspapers are in Ireland. These are the
valiant host whom their disgusted employers some-
times hear talking greedily of " wading knee-deep in
Catholic blood/^ and so forth. The placards in DubHn
streets, with their tall type of vituperation, are painful
to the eyes of a stranger. It is a stranger's business
to read them; but it is an embarrassment to stand to
do so. It is a pain to overhear the talk of poor men
about the coercion they are subject to — whatever
amusement their native wit may infuse into the topic.
" By Jasus,'' said one poor man to another, the other
day, " I don't know where to look to for meself. The
priest says if I don't vote agin for his mimber, heTl
keep me out of heaven ; and me landlord says if I do,
he'll turn me out of me cabin on earth. What I'll do,
I don't know." " Thry the say," suggested his com-
rade. According to the report above referred to, the
priest and the land- (or water-) lord are to be found
there too.

65

LETTER IX.

THE WOMEN.

August 27, 1852.
CoNSiDEEiNG that women's labour is universally un-
derpaid, in comparison with that of men, there is
something very impressive to the traveller in Ireland
in the conviction which grows upon liim, from stage
to stage, that it is the industry of the women which
is in great part sustaining the country. Though, in
one view, there is moral beauty in the case, the symp-
tom is a bad one. First, the men's wages are reduced
to the lowest point ; and then, capital turns to a
lower-paid class, to the exclusion of the men, wherever
the women can be employed in their stead. We
should be sorry to draw any hasty conclusions on a
matter of so much importance ; but, recalHng what
we have seen since we landed, we cannot but declare
that we have observed women not only diligently at
work on their own branches of industry, but sharing the
labours of the men in almost every employment that
we happen to have witnessed. As an economical
symptom, the employment of the least in the place of
the most able-bodied is one of the peculiarities which

66 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

marks the anomalous condition of Ireland. The fa-
mine time was, to be sure, an exception to all rules ;
but the same tendency was witnessed before, and is
witnessed still. At that time, one of the London
Companies sent directions to their agent to expend
money to a certain amount, and on no account to
allow anybody on their estates to starve. The agent
determined to have a great piece of " slob" land dug,
— employing for this purpose one boy out of every
family of a certain number, with a staff of aged men
for overseers, to superintend and measure the work.
Spades, from a moderate to a very small size, were
ordered; and a mighty provision of wheaten cakes
was carried down to the place every day at noon. The
boys were earnest and eager and conscientious about
their engagement. They were paid by the piece, and
they worked well. Some little fellows, who were so
small that they had to be lifted up to take their wages,
earned 5<s. a week. They grew fat upon their wheaten
food, and their families were able to live on their
earnings ; and if the Company did not gain, they did
not lose. But it must have been a piteous sight to
see households supported by their children and gran-
nies, instead of by the strong arm of him who stood
between. The women were at work at the same time.
The women of Ireland so learned to work then that
it will be very long indeed before they get a holiday,
or find their natural place as housewives.

We do not say recover their place as housewives;
for there is abundance of evidence that they have not
sunk from that position, but rather risen from a lower

THE WOMEN. 67

one than they now fill. Some years ago, the great
authority on Irish peasant life was Mrs. Leadbeater,
whose ' Cottage Dialogues' was the most popular of
Irish books till O'ConnelFs power rose to its height.
In the suspicion and hatred which he excited towards
the landlords, and the aristocracy generally, works
like Mrs. Leadbeater's, which proceed on the supposi-
tion of a sort of feudal relation between the aristocracy
and the peasantry, went out of favour, and have been
little heard of since. Elderly people have them on
their shelves however, and we know, through them,
what was the Hfe of the Irish peasant woman in the
early part of the century. We know how, too often,
the family lived in a mud hovel, without a chimney,
all grovelling on the same straw at night, and perhaps
with the pig among them ; and at meals tearing their
food with their fingers, and so forth. We know how
the women were in the field or the bog, while the
children were tumbling about in the manure at home.
Those who have been to Stradbally, Queen's County,
where Mrs. Leadbeater Kved, are aware of the ame-
lioration in cottage life produced by the efforts of her
daughter-in-law, by the introduction of domestic in-
dustry in the place of field labour. The younger
Mrs. Leadbeater taught fancy knitting to a bedridden
woman and her daughters, many years ago, for their
support. The example spread. Women came in from
the reaping and binding, — girls staid at home from
haymaking, and setting and digging potatoes. They
kept their clothes dry, their manners womanly, and
their cabins somewhat more decent. The quality of

68 LETTERS FKOM IRELAND.

the work grew finer and finer, till now we see issuing
from the cabins of Stradbally the famed " Spider
Mitts," "Impalpable Mitts," "Cobweb Mitts," or
whatever else English and American ladies like to
call them. Upwards of two hundred women and girls
are employed in this knitting ; and people who knew
Stradbally thirty years ago are so struck with the im-
provement in the appearance of the place, that they
declare that the lowest order of cabins appears to them
to be actually swept away.

Stradbally is only one of many such places. In
every house of the gentry one now sees sofas, chairs,
screens, and fancy tables spread with covers of cro-
chet-work— all done by the hands of peasant women.
In the south and west, where the famine was sorest,
terrible distress was caused, we are told, by the sud-
den abolition of the domestic manufactures on which
a former generation was largely dependent. The
people used to spin and weave linen, flannel, and
frieze, which were carried to market, as were the
knitted stockings of Counaught. In the famine, the
looms and spinning-wheels disappeared, with all other
cabin property. It is very well that, when tliis had
once happened, the same manufactures should not be
restored, because they are of a kind surely destined
to destruction before the manufacturing system. The
knitting goes on ; and it may long go on, so superior
as knitted stockings are to woven ones in point of wear.
And a variety of fine works are going on, in wild
western districts, where the workwomen who produce
such beautiful things never saw a shrub more than

THE WOMEN. 69

four feet high. In the south-west, lace of a really
fine quality is made in cabins where formerly hard-
handed women did the dirtiest work about the potato-
patch and piggery. Of the "hand-sewing/^ some
mention has been made before. We are assured at
Belfast — and it only confirmed what we heard in
Scotland — that no less than 400,000 women and girls
are employed, chiefly by the Glasgow merchants, in
" hand-sewing^^ in the Irish cabins. Their wages are
low, individually ; but it is a striking fact that these
women and girls earn fi'om £80,000 to £90,000
per week. It is a regular branch of industry, re-
quiring the labour of many men at Glasgow and
Belfast, to stamp the patterns on the musHn for the
women to work, and, again, to bleach it when it
comes in " green ^^ (that is, dirty — so dirty!) from
the hands of the needlewomen. They earn but Qd.
a-day, poor things ! in a general way, though at rare
times — such as the Exhibition season — their pay
amounts to 1*. ; but it must be considered that their
wear and tear of clothes is less than formerly, and that
there must, one would think, be better order preserved
at home.

So much for proper " women's work." But we
observe women working almost everywhere. In the
flax-fields there are more women than men pulling
and steeping. In the potato-fields it is often the
women who are saving the remnant of the crop. In
the harvest-fields there are as many women as men
reaping and binding. In the bog, it is the women

70 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

who, at half wages, set up, and turn, and help to
stack the peat, — not only for household use, but for
sale, and in the service of the Irish Peat Company.
In Belfast, the warehouses we saw were more than
half peopled with women, engaged about the linens
and muslins. And at the flax-works, near the city,
not only were women employed in the spreading
and drying, but in the rolling, roughing, and finish-
ing, which had always till now been done by men.
The men had struck for wages ; and their work was
given to girls, at 8^. per day.

Amidst facts like these, which accumulate as we
go, one cannot but speculate on what is to be the
end ; or whether the men are to turn nurses and
cooks, and to abide beside the hearth, while the wo-
men are earning the family bread. Perhaps the most
consolatory way of viewing the case is that wliich
we are quite willing to adopt, — that, practically, the
condition of women, and therefore of their house-
holds, is rising. If there is something painful in
seeing so undue a share of the burdens of life thrown
upon the weaker sex ; and if we cannot but remem-
ber that such a distribution of labour is an adopted
symptom of barbarism ; still, if the cabins are more
decent, and the women more womanlike, it seems as
if the process of change must be, on the whole, an
advance. As to the way out of such a state of
things, it seems as if it must be by that path to so
many other benefits — agricultural improvement. The
need of masculine labour, and the due reward of it,

I

THE WOMEN. 71

must both arise out of an improved cultivation of the
soil ; and it is not easy to see how they can arise in
any other way.

While tliinking and speaking of cabin life^ it oc-
cui's to us to notice the remarkable appearance of
health among the very lowest of the peasantry whom
we have yet encountered. What we may see in the
West we cannot anticipate ; but we are assured that
the same fact will strike us there, — that there also
we shall see grown people and children grovelling in
filth, with a manure-heap on the threshold, a stag-
nant pool before the door, and rotten thatch dropping
on the stale straw on which they sleep, and they
nevertheless stout, clear-eyed, and ruddy. From this
we except, of course, particular situations and cir-
cumstances in which ophthalmia and fever arise, such
as crowded dens in towns, and over-peopled work-
houses. AThat this mischief amounts to may be
partly judged of by the number of one-eyed people,
and persons marked with the small-pox, who may be
seen at assemblages like Donnybrook Fair ; where
we observed more than can easily be seen at once,
anywhere out of Egypt. But these people are not
usually peasants, living in country cabins. As to
the cause of the apparent health, it is said to be
notliing else than the antiseptic properties of the
peat. We know how charred and powdered peat is
valued as a deodorizing agent. Plenty of this crum-
bled peat lies in and about every cabin, on the mud
or flint-paved floor, on the threshold, in the pool,

72 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

and dropped about on the manure. If this is the
real reason of the undeserved healthiness of the ordi-
nary Irish cabin, it is as well that the EngUsh should
know it, for the sake of many thousands of poor fever
patients who might be made the better for the
3,000,000 of acres of bog which might be emptied
out, greatly to the advantage of Ireland.

73

LETTER X.

RAILWAY FROM DUBLIN TO GALWAY— BOG OF ALLEN.

August 29, 1852.
The railway from Dablin to Galway carries the tra-
veller completely across Ireland — from the Irish
Channel to the Atlantic — in six hours. The speed is
not great — a Httle short of twenty-one miles an hour ;
but the punctuality is remarkable. The Dublin and
Galway Eailroad is not a very easy one to travel on in
regard to steadiness. Eor the third of the line near-
est to Dublin there are many curves, and pretty severe
ones, so that the shaking of the carriages is disagree-
able. For the rest of the way the road cuts straight
through bog, with very narrow intervals of more solid
ground ; and a httle jumping is not therefore to be
wondered at, or found fault with. The marvel would
have been, a quarter of a century ago, that the weight
of a railway train should ever be carried across the
bog at all.

The road traverses the great limestone basin which
occupies the centre of Ireland ; and there is scarcely
any variation of level all the way. The engineer's dif-
ficulties were wholly with the consistency of the soil,

74 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

and not at all \^ith any hills and dales. One plea-
sant consequence of this is that the traveller sees for
miles on either hand, and is not bhnded and stunned
by being whirled through cuttings. To us it appears
as if there was scarcely a mile of cutting the m hole
way. Some who know the road may ask what is
the good of this, considering what it is that is to be
seen. But when one^s object is to study the face of
a country, nothing comes amiss, — neither Salisbury
Plain nor the Bog of Allen. We (two of us) deter-
mined to use our opportunity of passing through a
dead level of nearly 125 miles, to see everything
on both sides the road, — and a dihgent look-out we
kept,

First, about the potatoes. We can safely say that
we did not see one healthy ridge of them between
Dublin and Galway ; and we believe there is not one.
It appeared indeed as if, in despair, the people had
left the potatoes to their fate without a struggle. In
the greater number of cases the field was so gay
with poppies and other weeds as to leave only a black
shadow of the potato-plant in the midst ; and, quite
universally, the ridges were so choked with grass
and weeds that no care could possibly have been
taken of the crop at any time this season. The oats
were as weedy as many that we have before described ;
and some of the pastures as overgrown with thistles
and ragwort ; but they did not present the same evi-
dences of reckless despair as the numerous potato-
fields. Some of the pastures were so fine, of so pure
a grass and so brilliant a verdure, that there would

THE BOG OF ALLEN. 75

have been muningled pleasure in looking on them
but for the drawback that the hay is not yet carried.
There it stands in cocks, in these last days of August,
to catch the rains which are coming up with this
west wind from the Atlantic : and a sad pity it seems.
"We do not expect to see much more such grass ; and
we can scarcely see finer anywhere. The limestone
bottoms favour pasturage so much, that we hope the
day may come when, in all the intervals of the great
central bog, there may be a most advantageous stock
farming carried on. In those days the hay will, we
suspect, be saved six weeks earlier; though it should
in fairness be said that we are told that Enghsh cri-
tics have no idea what allowance it is necessary to
make for the caprices of the Irish climate.

As we proceeded, we looked with a regretful inter-
est on the trees, where we saw them grouped in any
beauty— as they were, if we are rightly informed,
nearly the last we shall see for some time to come.
Among the wild scenery of the west coast we shall
see quite another kind of beauty. The College at
Maynooth appears to be . surrounded by gardens and
thriving plantations ; and some old trees hang about
the neighbouring ruins of the ancient castle of the
Fitzgeralds of Leinster, and clothe the entrance to
the estate of the Duke of Leinster. There are large
plantations again on the estates of Lord Clancarty,
at Ballinasloe, though there we have entered on the
bog country, which extends all the way to Galway.
A more desolate tract of country than that which
stretches forward from the boundary of Lord Clan-

E 2

76 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

carty^s liberal improvements, we are hardly likely ever
to see. It makes the imagination ache, like the eye.
What it must be may be in some measure conceived,
if we remember that Ireland contains very nearly
3,000,000 of acres of bog ; that six-sevenths of tliis
amount He between lines drawn from Wicklow Head
to Galway, and from Howth Hill to SHgo ; and that,
wdthin that space, the greater proportion of bog lies
west of the Shannon. When CromweU transplanted
all disaffected families from other parts to Connaught,
and when Connaught became the proverbial alter-
native of heU, the great bog was no doubt the up-
permost image in men^s minds. The disgraces of
Connaught certainly recur with strong force to the
traveller's mind when he traverses that bog for the
first time.

The depth is at the deepest part forty-two feet : at
the shallowest, where it is worked, about six feet.
The deep and wide drains are satisfactory to look
upon ; and so are the blue smokes where heaps of peat
are burning with an intermixture of clay, — working
the process of reclamation ; and so, perhaps, are the
dismal patches of thin and feeble oats, where, wholly
surrounded by black bog, the reaper and his chil-
dren, bare-legged and half clad, suspend their work
to see the train go by. The vast " clamps" (stacks)
of peat, the acres upon acres covered with httle heaps
of the drying " bricks" of turf, the brown and black
terraces, just sprinkled with new heather and weeds,
may be dreary ; but they are not dismal ; for they
tell of industry, and some harvest of comfort, how-

THE BOG OF ALLEN. 77

ever small. But there are other sights, — groups of
ruins, as at Athenry — staring fragments of old cas-
tles, and churches, and monasteries; and worse than
these, a very large number of unroofed cottages.
For miles together, in some places, there is scarcely a
token of human presence but the useless gables and
the empty doorways and window-spaces of pairs or
rows of deserted cottages. There is . something so
painful — so even exasperating in this sight, that one
wishes that a little more time and labour could be
spared to level the walls, as well as take off the roof,
when tenants are either ejected, or go away of their
own accord. Yet, while substantial stone walls are
thus staring in the traveller's face, what cabins —
actual dwellings of families — are here and there dis-
tinguishable in the midst of the bog ! styes of mud,
bulging and tottering, grass-grown, half-swamped
with bog-water, and the soil around all poached with
the tread of bare feet. In comparison with such
places, the stony lands near Galway (a vivid green
ground, strewn with grey stones) look wholesome,
and almost cheerful, but for the wrecks of habitations.
From the time that we enter upon the district of the
red petticoats — the red flannel and frieze, which form
a part of the dress of most of the Galway people —
things look better than in the brown and black region
of the bog.

Yet we were accustomed, a year ago, to hear the
Boo; of Allen called the Irish California. This was in
our minds as we passed through it yesterday ; and
we had not forgotten it when we were in Antrim;

78 LETTERS PROM IRELAND.

and we went down into Kildare on purpose to s.ee
about it. The interest excited a year ago by the
news of Messrs. Reece and Owen^s patent, and by
the promise that peat should be converted into divers
useful substances by a process yielding enormous pro-
fits, was not only natural, but thoroughly justifiable.
If it were really probable that the substance which
occupies nearly 3,000,000 of acres of the surface of
Ireland could be turned into wealth, the fact would
be of such incalculable importance to the whole peo-
ple— and to our whole empire — that no degree of
earnestness could be ridiculous or misplaced. Men
of business distrusted the statement of probable pro-
fits ; and men of science were aware that difficulties^
many and great, usually occur in reducing scientific
prospects to commercial facts, under a delegated
agency; but none were willing to discourage a trial,
or to prophesy failure in the pursuit of so great a
good. As far we can make the matter out, the re-
sults thus far have not been very encouraging ; but
still, so great is the stake, the scientific and practical
seem to agree to treat the enterprise gently and cheer-
fully, in hope of better days.

This is a matter about which the public can form
some judgment for themselves, without taking the
trouble that we have taken, of going to the works of
the Irish Peat Company, four miles from Athy. The
first annual meeting of the company took place in
London at the end of July ; the report was printed
in the London papers the next day, and it has been
copied all over the country. Each reader of that

THE BOG OF ALLEX. 79

report can judge for himself as to whether, if the Bog
of Allen had been the mine of wealth supposed by
the patentees, this company's report would have been
what we see it is. If the wealth be there, it will
come forth through the retorts, pipes, and hydraulic
presses at the works. There is no opposition, we be-
lieve, no enmity to meet, no antagonism whatever but
that of Xature ; and therefore the thing, if feasible,
will be done.

On inquiry about this matter at Belfast, we found
that the experiments tried at Antrim had come to
nothing. The thing was completely over there ; and
we were informed that the only place where any
works were going on was at the establishment near
Athy. In Dublin we could not find that any interest
was felt, or that any products had ever been seen.
We therefore went down into Kildare to see for our-
selves. We found the bog lands of the company,
consisting of 500 acres, h'ing close to the railway,
the managers of which have acted in a must hberal
spirit to the company — as the report informs us —
even constructing a siding at their own expense.
There was the furnace, vrith the gases blazing within;
and there was the hydraulic press, full of paraffine, in
its woollen cloth ; and there were barrels, with more
or less of tar, and spirit, and oils. The distillation
was going on ; and tliree or four men were about the
place. We were told by the agent, afterwards, that
fifteen people are employed on the works, besides
those engaged in digging the peat: but three men
had been so burned the day before, as to need remo-

80 LETTERS from: IRELAND.

val to the Kildare Infirmary; and the foreman had
that morning burned his hand. We, no doubt, saw
the place at an unfavourable time ; and the works have
never fully recovered their spirit since a fire which
took place in February last, by which £300 worth of
peat was burnt. The agent told us of intended new
buildings, new furnaces, etc. ; and we see by the re-
port that the shareholders (who are not the public
at large, but a few gentlemen interested in the enter-
prise) are called upon for a payment of £2 per share,
in addition to the £4 already received. When these
new buildings are up, and the furnaces at work, we
shall be better able to judge of the prospects of Ire-
land with regard to her bogs. At present there has
been an expenditure of above £12,000, without (as
we understand the report) any profit to the company.
The agent speaks of "difficulties;" and such cer-
tainly beset all new undertakings. He declares that
all the original chemical statements have been verified,
and all promises fulfilled. If so, success must soon
stifle all cavil. Meantime, the observation is natural,
that there are no sales made except in London. K
the products are of the value and immediate use
alleged, it seems strange that they should not find a
market nearer home. On the whole, while every one
appears to wish, sincerely and earnestly, that the bogs
of Ireland may be turned to a richer and more speedy
account than ])y the old method of toilsome and gra-
dual reclamation, the hope of such an issue of the
new experiment seems to weaken with time. If the
wealth is so very great, it is strangely slow in coming

THE BOG OP ALLEN. 81

in ; and, while no one will say that peat is not converti-
ble into candles, naphtha, oils, ammonia, and gases,
there is more and more hesitation in saying that the
conversion will ever be worth while. The consolation
under this doubt is, that the experiment, if sound,
cannot fail soon to vindicate itself.

k8

82

LETTER XI.

GALWAY.

August 31, 1852.
Whatever we may find that is strange in the wild
parts of Ireland, we shall hardly find anything stranger
than this town of Galway. If we should encounter
a wilder barbarism in remote places, it will, at least,
not be jumbled together with an advanced civihzation.
See here what has struck us already.

We approached the place through a series of lime-
stone bottoms which ought to afford the finest pas-
turage. Nothing can be fresher, sweeter, or more
delicate than the grass that grows there, though there
is no great weight of it. The people destroy these
slopes and levels as pasture, breaking it up to grow
potatoes, of which they lose this year 80 per cent.
As, owing to natural advantages, nothing can alto-
gether stop the grazing, butter of the finest quality
is sold in Galway (none being exported) at \s. a lb.
throughout the year ; the pound consisting of 28 oz.
Yet there is no manure whatever saved or made from
any kind of stock or land-growth. The people will
have seaweed, and no other manure whatever. Now,

GALWAY. 83

see what a story belongs to this seaweed. It is the
red weed^ which is tlirown up in vast quantities, in
every bay and on every promontory, from the north
coast of Mayo to the extreme south-west of Ireland.
After all is taken for manure that the people will use,
two-thirds are left to rot and be lost. A professor of
chemistry examined this weed, and saw reason to be
confident that, if properly burned, it might be made
an article of profitable production. He is certain that
the extinguished kelp fires might be profitably re-
lighted all along the coasts, not for the sake of the
soda, which was the product formerly sought by kelp-
burning, but which can now be had more cheaply from
common salt, but for the sake of the iodine and pot-
ash salts, which tliis particular weed yields in abund-
ance, when burned in a certain manner. He went
over to the island of Arran, and there arranged his
plans. He purchased seven stacks of the weed, at £1
per stack, and he promised £3 more for the burning.
This boming would take one man three weeks, or three
men one week. One need not say that tliis pay is much
higher than could be obtained by selling the weed
for manure, even if there had not been abundance
for both purposes. All was agreed upon; and the
professor paid half the money into the hands of the
priest, in the presence of the men, promising the re-
mainder when the work should be finished. In the
morning, as he was proceeding to the spot with the
rake he had brought over for the men^s use, they met
him, and, under various pretences, threw up their
bargain.

84 LItTTERS PROM IRELAND.

There is a fish abounding in these bays, and near
the land (for the Claddagh fishermen will not go far
to sea) called the basking shark. To what extent it
abounds may be judged by the fact that eighty were
taken last season, under all disadvantages. Each fish
yields six barrels of oil ; and the liver of a single fish
fills one of the Claddagh boats. The oil is almost
inestimable as a commercial resource, if its value was
understood; but the people do not understand or
beheve it ; and they sell it all, as train-oil, to a pur-
chaser from Dublin, who comes and buys it up. This
oil burns with a light as brilliant as sperm ; and the
professor of chemistry here vouches that its Vi^lue for
medicinal purposes is nearly or quite equal to tliat of
cod-liver oil. Yet, there is no inducing the Claddagh
men to use any harpoon in pursuing the l)asking
shark, but the antique one, which allows many more
fish to escape than it secures. We were, the other
day, in a boat with a man who last season struck
seven fish which escaped, and which he might have
secured with a proper harpoon : and he sticks by the
old one yet. To appreciate the mournfulness and vex-
atiousness of this perverseness, one must walk tlu-ough
Claddagh, looking into the houses as one goes.

It is a spectacle never to be forgotten by an Eng-
lishman. Claddagh is a suburb of Galway — a village
of fishermen's cabins. The cottages are in rows ; and
there are therefore streets or alleys, where grass
springs between the stones, or moss tufts them, and
where a stunted elder-busli, or other tree, affords a
strange little patch of verdure in the dreary place.

I

GALWAY. 85

The rest of the verdure is on the roofs. Nettles,
docks, and grass grow to the height of two feet, and
the thistle and ragwort shed their seeds into the
thatch. Where the thatch has tumbled in, the holes
are covered with matting, kept down by large stones,
which make new holes in the rotten mass. The once
white walls are mossy and mouldy. The sordidness
is indescribable. But infinitely worse is the inside.
Some have no windows at all. Yoices were heard
from the interior of one where there was no window,
and where the door was shut. In several, men were
mending their nets by the light from the door; in one
we saw, through the darkness, a woman on her knees
on the mud floor, netting, at a net which was sus-
pended from the roof; and again we saw, kneeling at
a bench, a mother and daughter, whose faces haunt
us. The mother^s eyes were bleared, and her hair
starting bke a patient^s in Bedlam. Elsewhere we
saw a litter of pigs wallowing in the mud close by the
head of the bed. Many mothers in the street, and
even in the fish-market, were performing that opera-
tion on their daughters^ heads or on their own per-
sons, which is apt turn Enghsh stomachs in Xaples
or Lisbon. But enough. This mere fragment of de-
scription will show something of how the Claddagh
people live, while the basking shark abounds on the
coast, and dozens of Claddagh boats are laid up in the
harbour. On inquiring whom this village belonged
to, we were informed that it has lately been purchased
by a Mr. Grattan, and that he is hoping to induce
the people to use a modern harpoon wliich he is send-

86 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

ing tliem. But, till this is achieved, Avhat is to be
done about those cabins ? How can any man endure
to call them his ?

There is a clergyman on the island of Arran who
has set up a trawling-boat, with a crew of two men,
said to be Scotch. The success of this little fishery
is what might be expected on such a coast, and what
might attend any other well-served trawling-boats.
It is necessary to be cautious in receiving details in
this part of the world ; but the profits of that fishery
are said to have been, in the past season, from £12 to
£16 per week. The Claddagh men attacked the boat,
and threatened, in all seriousness, the life of the
clergyman. He applied to Government for protection,
and a steamer has been sent in consequence. Some
Claddagh men were asked, in our presence, the other
day, whether it would not be better for them to try
for a share in so profitable a fishery ; and why they
did not club together to get trawling boats, and
prosper like the clergyman. They replied that they
had their own boats in the harbour ; that they were
poor men ; that they did not want any new ways ; that
they had always been used to their own boats ; and
so forth. The answer to all proffers of advantage to
the people here is, that they don^t want any improve-
ments.

" Here is the barbarism,^^ you will say ; " but where
is the civilization ?" You have had news of the rail-
road. Here is a new canal — a massive and admirable
work, to all appearance, opening the great lakes to the
bay. A short canal connects Lough Mask with Lougli

GALWAY. 87

Corrib ; and this new line, very short also, with some
improvement of the navigation of the river Corrib, and
some deepening of parts of the lake, establishes an
admirable waterway for the conveyance of produce
from the interior. Of the interior and its produce
we may say more when we have seen them. As to
the aspect of Gal way, the place seems to have been
furnished with a vast apparatus for various social
action, for which there is no scope. Here is the rail-
road, with, as yet, very little traffic. Here is this
canal, with, as yet, no trade. Here is a nobly situated
port, with, at present, no article of export. Here is
a great hotel, built apparently in some prophetic anti-
cipation of custom in future years. Here is the very
handsome Queen^s College, with its staff of twenty
professors, and its forty-two scholarships, while its
halls echo to the tread of seventy-five students. The
number on the books is about one hundred and
twenty ; and the attendance is seventy-five. The grey
marble edifice stands up strangely amidst bare plots
of ground and desolate fields, heaped up or strewed
over with stones, and inlets of water, which glitter in
the sun on every side. The sea runs in wherever it
can find an opening; and there is the river Corrib,
and the canal ; and a cut through the rocks for the
water-power which turns the great wheel at Tranklin's
marble-cutting establishment. The amount of water-
power would make a great manufacturing centre of
the place at once, if Galway were in America; here it
seems to add to the desolation of the scene. Well,
there is, besides, the new workhouse, also of grey

88 LETTERS EROM IRELAND.

stone ; and the model schools under the National
Board — the most hopeful feature, perhaps, of the
singular scene. Across one arm of the bay there are
woods; and, when your boat approaches the beach
there, you see gay gardens, productive orchards, rows
of stacked corn and hay ; and, across another inlet,
more stacks, another orchard, verdant pastures, a
pretty farm-house, some splendid stock; and you
believe you have found one piece of sound prosperity
on the shores of Galway Bay. You find that the
tenant of the farm is the agent of the whole estate,
under whose management it has reached this pros-
perity; but he is going away. His stock is to be
sold off; the pastures he has retrieved to their natural
use will be broken up into potato-grounds. He is
the Professor of Agriculture in the college. He has
only five pupils there, but his example on this farm
might have done more than his instructions in the
college. Why is he leaving liis farm ? Because the
noble owner of tlie property which has been so much
benefited by his science and skill died of cholera last
year, and the widow will not (possibly cannot) grant
the tenant a lease which will justify his remaining on
his farm.

So much for the agriculture. We have seen liow it is
with the fisheries and the seaweed. There are marble
quarries at hand, — the fine black marble of Galway,
and the green marbles of Connemara, so well known
by name, but of which so little use is made. With
all these resources, and many more, Galway has no
trade; and people who desire improvement look for

GALWAY. 89

it from the place being made an American packet
station. For passengers, and mails, and latest news
by the electric telegraph, it may serve ; but surely not
for goods traffic: the trans-shipment for the pas-
sage of the Irish Channel must be a fatal objection"^.
However this may be, we would fain see the Galway
people using now their great advantages, while await-
ing what the future may bring. The difficulty seems
to lie in the absence of a middle class of society. The
people are, in this, like the buildings. There are
imposing edifices — hotel, college, schools — and there
are the thatched cottages of the old town, and the
Claddagh cabins. If, after looking round for middle-
class abodes, you think you have discovered a row or
group, you find they are convents, and you are shown
the cross upon the roof. In the same way, you find
two kinds of aristocracy in the place — the proud old
families, either rolling in their gay carriages through
the narrow old streets (and past, among other houses,
the weedy grey mansion of the Warden of Galway),
or secluding themselves within their own gates, be-
cause they are too poverty-stricken to come abroad;
and the implanted society of the college professors
and their families, and other officials. Between these
and the poor you find scarcely anybody — the poor, of
whom not one in forty can read, and whose ignorance
is of a worse kind than an absence of all notion of
books. There are a few shops, languid and old-
fashioned; and there must be industrial people of

* Since this was ^Titten, the commissioners have reported against
Galway for an American packet-station.

90 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

sufficient intelligence to carry on the business of life :
but there is no substantial, abounding middle class,
from whom the rise of a place of such capabilities
might be confidently expected.

Of the religion of the region we will say little till
we know more. Taking all the Irish colleges together,
there was a decided increase of CathoHc students after
the Synod of Thurles. This is a cheering fact. In
the Gal way College and Model Schools the proportion
of Cathohcs and Protestants accords very fairly with
that of society generally. The Yice-president of the
College is a Catholic ; but he has lost caste among his
own order, who are vehemently opposed to the insti-
tution ; he has been absent for six months past — gone
to Rome, to represent the mistakes that the Pope has
been led into about these colleges. We shall see
whether any good results from his voluntary mission"^.
Meantime, we have seen something. We yesterday
turned, after leaving the college and schools, into the
parish chapel, — a dim, large, sordid-looking building,
with a shadow of an old woman on the steps, selling
rosaries; and four blind, crippled, and decrepit per-
sons within; two telling their beads on their knees,
and two asking charity. All this we should have ex-
pected ; and the dressed altar, and the confessionals.
But there was more, which we could not have antici-
pated. Panelled in the wall, there was a barbarous
image of Christ, for the most part hung with cobwebs,
but with one leg and foot black and shining — no

* The Pope has compelled him to rcsitin his oflice, while clcclariug
that lay students are not Ibrhidden to attend the colleges.

GALWAY. 91

doubt with the kisses of worshipers; and worse —
there was another panelled image, a bas-relief, of
God the Father, as a hideous, bearded, mitred old
man ; and God the Son, as a lamb with a human face,
equally hideous. We turned away, and, when in the
open street again, felt as if we had passed, with one
step, from the recesses of a pagan temple into the ves-
tibule of our own home.

9S

CHAPTER XII.

CONNEMARA.

September 3, 1852.
There are few things in the world more delightful
than a drive at sunset, in a bright autumn evening,
among the mountains and lakes of Connemara. A
friend of ours describes the air of his favourite place
by saying it is like breathing champagne. The air
here, on such an evening, is like breathing cream. It
has the best qualities of the sea and land breeze at
once. Then there are the grand bare mountains, the
Bennobeola, or Twelve Pins, with caprices of sunhght
playing about their solemn heads, and shining into
their dark purple depths ; and below are waters un-
traceable and incalculable. We are here at the ends
of the earth, to all appearance ; for the land is as a
fringe, with the waters running in everywhere between
its streaks. There are salt waters and fresh : bays,
lakes, river ; dashing torrents ; mirror-Hke pools ; a
salmon-leap here; an inlet for shellfish there; and,
receding behind, Ballinahincli Lough, with its little
island, just big enough to hold the old castle, now a
ruin, where tradition says that ^Dick Martin^ used to

CONNEMAUA. 93

imprison people who were guilty of cruelty to animals.
Then comes a basin of turf — a filled-up lake, as any one
may see, with the last little pool in the middle fast
turning into bog. Close at hand are broken banks,
gaudy with heath and bo£^ flowers in vast variety;
and beyond spreads the bronzed moorland, with fo-
reign-looking goats, black and white, browsing in a
group ; and sea-gulls dipping, as if they took it for
the sea. Along the road are brown-faced girls and
boys, all healthy-looking, and many handsome; and
women finishing their reaping and binding for the
day, — their madder-red petticoats and blue cloaks
throwing a wonderful charm of colour into the scene.
And next, we cannot but observe that cottages are
whitewashed as we approach Clifden. This was no-
ticeable in the neighbourhood of the mansion lately
called the Martins' Castle ; and pleasant it was to see
neat white cottages up on the hill-sides, each with its
"stooks" of oats before it. In proportion to the
sweetness of such an evening drive is the strangeness
of entering the public drawing-room at the inn, where
there are ladies and clergymen, all intensely occupied
with the condition of the people. There are Bibles
open and shut. There is talk of a Protestant lecture
this evening; of Protestant prayers in the morning,
preparatory to an examination of the children in the
principles of Protestantism. Ladies are busy with
crochet-work, or with their accounts of crochet-work
sold, or in teaching poor women crochet. The ladies
relate that they have thus far sent out teachers to
instruct the poor women in cabins in crochet-work.

94 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

with the simple object of earning their bread : but that
now, as these pupils have been almost all Catholics,
they shall alter their plan, and give this instruction
only in connection with sound Protestant principles.
They tell how wonderfully the ministry of Mr. — has
been blessed, from his plan of speaking plainly ; that
he has plainly told the people, " If you attend to what
the priests tell you, \ ou will go to perdition ; if you
learn of me, you will be saved ;" and this plan, they
say, has " certainly been wonderfully blessed ; " " the
people are coming over by hundreds, and the answers
given by the children are really astonishing.''^ This
is one statement, earnest and sincere, whatever else it
may be.

Another is, that the people were terribly neglected
by the priests, and that the novelty of being sought,
caressed, and flattered, stimulates their ambition, while
it excites their affections ; that the native shrewdness
is called forth, and that it is true that the answers of
the children are wonderful — that, in fact, tlieir apti-
tude at theological controversy is something truly
frightful to witness ; that their new religion will pro-
bably turn out a very transitory matter ; that, in re-
gard to this very crochet-work, on which their bread
depends, the women do one or two pieces admirably,
and then grow careless, preferring to do two collars
that shall bring a shilling each to doing one wliicli
shall bring in six ; that their characteristic versatility
and slovenliness will presently extend to their religion ;
and that, when the first excitements of praise, gain,
notice, and gratified aft'ections are over, it is probable

CONNEMARA. 95

that nearly all the converts will fall back under the
old-established power of their priests. They will go
back, as Gavan Dufty said, to the old Holy Well.

There is a third account given to the inquirer. It
begins like the last, with the declaration that the
people were deserted in their need by the priests, who
really refused the offices to the dying on which salva-
tion is supposed to depend, when all hope of pay was
gone. It is said that the people have fairly found out
that the priest's attendance depends on his pay, and
that he desires to keep them ignorant : that the grand
benefit of the present movement is that it teaches the
people something, and rouses the priests to better be-
haviour, and the people to require it : that the prac-
tice of the clergy on both sides teaching that their
antagonists are carrying their hearers to hell tends to
make the people reject both doctrines; and that in
fact a total infidelity, such as now prevails largely
among the educated, in this region of strife, will pro-
bably prevail ere long no less extensively among the
poor and ignorant.

Here you have the various local opinions, as they
have reached us, on a subject which is occupying more
attention here at present than any other. From the
temper in which it is discussed by the most zealous,
it is far from being agreeable to the stranger. And
it must not be forgotten that we have at present heard
only the proselyting side. At Dublin we found in the
National Schools that two or three hundred teachers,
from all parts of Ireland, can live and learn together.
Catholics and Protestants, at the very age of theologi-

96 LETTERS EROM IRELAND.

cal passion — from seventeen upwards — without a word
of strife for years together, while earnest in their work
as any of the apostles of the west. Here, in the west,
we find it taken for granted, or as proved, that the two
faitlis are opposite as heaven and hell, and that their
professors can make no terms whatever with each other.
It is perhaps fair to remark tliat, in the DubHn case,
the Church, strictly so called, — that is, the laity in
conjunction with the clergy, — are engaged in the work
of education. Here, in the west, it appears to us that
the enterprise is mainly engrossed by clergymen and
ladies. If so, the difference in temper and spirit is
easily accounted for. Of this we shall know more as
we proceed.

Before we left Galway, we saw increasing reason
to believe that the fearful apparent wretchedness of
the people is no necessary indication of poverty. The
five pigs wallowing near the bed^s head is an instance.
At the present value of pigs here — a value greatly
enhanced by the potato- disease — these five must be
worth many pounds. Elsewhere, we have seen a very
fine cow, or perhaps two, belonging to a hovel so
wretched that you would suppose the people liad no
prospect of another meal. The pawnbrokers^ shops
at Galway reveal a great deal. We find that the peo-
ple have no idea of selling any of their possessions
when they want money, — of traffic, in fact. They beg,
they pawn, they resort to every possible device before
they think of selling a pig, or anything else that they
have ; and the collections of rags — Irish rags — at the
Galway pawnbrokers' are a singulai* sight. They would

CONNEMARA. 97

melt the heart of any stranger, unless he should learn
that the owners of some of the tatters had pigs or
cows or other stock at home, to the value of many
pounds. The peasants do not like to be supposed to
have any property ; they do not like paying rent, on
this account ; and they prefer paying it, if tliey must,
in some sort of barter. All this is a painful evidence
of what sort of treatment they must have been subject
to, some time or other ; and it makes their present
case so difficult to deal with, that one is not surprised
to find their most spirited and humane and patient
friends despairing of ever teaching them to live cleanly
and respectably. But the case may, it seems to us,
be fairly regarded as now a hopeful one. AVe may be
somewhat misled by the charms of w'hat we have seen
of Connemara ; but we are certainly in better spirits
about " the poor Irish" than we have ever before been
since we entered the country. We should never have
conceived beforehand that Connemara would be the
place where we should feel cheered : but so it is.

In the first place, the healthful appearance of the
people is something quite remarkable. Men, women,
and children are plump, brown, clear-eyed, comfort-
able-looking in face and limb. We are told that about
one- fifth of the population on and around the Martin
and D^Arcy estates (now bearing those names no
longer) died during the famine. A good many —
nobody seems to know how many — but certainly no
great multitude — ^have since emigrated. Those who
remain used to think they could live on nothing but
potatoes. In one mansion that we have visited, the

F

98 LETTERS PROM IRELAND.

servants thought all was over when they were restricted
in regard to potatoes, and supplied with Indian meal
and other things. Last year, when the potatoes were
good, and they were told they might return to them,
they begged for a portion of meal also. Six years
ago, a girl on the estate said, " O ma'am, I hope the
Lord will take me to himself before I have to eat tur-
nips.^' She was soon glad enough to get turnip-tops,
poor thing ! And yesterday, an intelligent lad, who
was our guide to CKfden Castle, took pains repeatedly
to explain to us what turnips were, with a zeal and
pride which showed that the growth was new here,
and highly esteemed. According to his testimony the
ragged people here get meat sometimes, and a good
deal of meal. Is not this good, as far as it goes ?

The castle at Clifden, a part of the late DMrcy
property, is inhabited by a gentleman who is said in
the neighbourhood to have done much good by "teach-
ing the people better ways." They were his turnips
that were, with his other crops, shown us with so much
pride. And very well they looked. The quantity of
land that goes with the mansion, is, we were told, 250
acres, which feeds "an illigant stock," and leaves a
good deal for sale, and of course employs many peo-
ple. It was a ragged boy who said, hi answer to our
remark on the whitewashed cottages which shine all
around on the hill-sides, that you may always know
that the people are well-doing within when you see
whitewash on the outside. AVe saw some fair plots of
oats and turnips before these places ; and girls feeding
calves, and here and there a vast hydrangea flowering

CONNEMARA. 99

near the door. From the inlet below, fish come n[)
all the year round. The men bring in large turbot.
which sell for 1^. ^r/. or Is, 6d. each ; and the boys
wade at low tide for shellfish. The salmon-fisheries,
belonging to the Martin estate, employ not less than
fifty persons on the average of the year. The tin for
the cases is imported from Cornwall, and the cases are
made on the spot. Flags are imported, and used for
floorings (better than mud !) and also for the grinding
and poUshing of the marbles of the district. These
importations take place at the httle wharf erected by
the late Mr. D'Arcy, whose unfinished monument
(begun before the famine, and left stunted) deserves
to be completed by grateful admirers, and to stand for
future generations to be proud of, on its commanding
summit, visible far over sea and land. Wliat the pre-
sent exports are it is not easy to make out, without
closer inquiry than we have yet had time for ; but it
is easy to see what they might, and probably will, be.
The agent of the Law Life Insurance Company^s pro-
perty (late the Martins^), is gradually reclaiming ex-
tents of bog, which will yield a great amount of pro-
duce. The success thus far affords a sure promise of
this. Some small openings have been made in the
centre of a valley, which reveal not only the green
marble of which the celebrated chimney-piece at the
Martins' is made, but that there are mountains of it ;
and the same elsewhere with the black. The red sea-
weed, mentioned before, abounds in all the bays.
The sea, lakes, and rivers yield a vast wealth of pro-
duce : so mio'ht the surface of the crpound : so does its

100 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

interior. It is true the liill-sides are deformed by the
staring gables of deserted dwellings ; it is true the
gardens of the castle are damp and weedy, and
the noble fig-tree trailing from the wall; it is true
that the D^Arcy monument is unfinished, and the
town of his creation more dependent for subsistence,
just now, on the influx of tourists, than a steady
trade ; it is true that the timid have a genuine side
of the question as well as the hopeful. But it is also
true that the two great estates have come into new
hands, by which they may obtain that improvement
which was before impossible ; and that the people are
fed and in health; and that their district is full of
natural wealth ; and that strangers know it ; and it
is true beyond controversy that the condition and
temper of the peasantry are improved. At this agree-
able conclusion we stop for to-day.

101

LETTER XIII.

THE PEOPLE AXD THE CLERGY.

September 5, 1852.
The most experienced travellers find one piece of
experience ever fresh and striking — their inability to
anticipate^ through any amount of previous reading
and inquiry^ what they shall see and what they shall
think in a new country. After wide travelling, ex-
tended over many years, we are now feeling this as
freshly as in our first journey ; and we need not be
ashamed to own it, as the same acknowledgment is
made by some persons who were likely to know a
good deal more beforehand about the Irish than our-
selves— the English settlers in Connemara. Some
of them declare that, while in no one respect disap-
pointed, they find the Irish people with whom they
have to do, and their circumstances, different from
what they expected. After a long course of reading
and thought on Ireland and its main interests, there
were two things, among others, about which we felt
ourselves pretty well assured — that in the wild TTest
we should find the peasantry poor, to the point of
hunger; and that we should be in some sympathy

102 LETTERS EROM IRELAND.

with the Catholics — priests and people — under the
injury of the establishment, over their heads, of the
religion of the minority, and under the suffering of the
contumely with which they are treated by the insolent
Protestantism of the country. Do not be alarmed.
Do not suppose that we are any nearer than formerly to
sympathy with insolence — Protestant or Catholic —
or to approbation of the estabhshment of the religion
of the minority over the heads of the majority. We
^ill presently explain what we mean.

Since we wrote last we have seen multitudes of the
peasantry and town labourers ; nearly all, in fact, that
there are to see; for they are a people who do not
stay much within- doors at this season (to which,
indeed, there is little temptation), and we have not
seen one unhealthy-looking person. Our attention
has been particularly directed to this since we entered
upon what are especially called the famine districts.
We have passed through the districts of the English
settlers ; we have skirted the lonely Kylemorc Lough,
and crossed the moorlands at its head ; we have tra-
velled the length of the wild Killeries (where it was
scarcely possible to believe ourselves within the
bounds of our own empire), and traversed the dreary
tract which lies between the Erive and Westport ; we
have left Connemara behind us, and penetrated some
way into Mayo, and we have as yet seen only the
same stout, brown, clear-eyed health that we have
spoken of in former letters. We are now about to
plunge into the very wildest part of the island — be-
yond Achill to the Mullet, which was depopulated by

f

THE PEOPLE AND THE CLERGY. 103

the famine. If we have a different story to tell after
being there, you will soon know it. Meanwhile, I
tell you what we have found. Prom every cluster of
hovels by the roadside — from behind a dunghill on
which a noble eagle is somehow secured — from over
the fences — from all imaginable places — children,
lads, lasses, sometimes women, rush forth, with
bundles of stockings and socks, with crystals, or bits of
marble or of coral, and run beside the car, with their
light, easy, bog-trotting pace, for miles, begging, more
or less earnestly, or, in some cases, apparently for the
sport. They seem to have lost no breath, at what-
ever distance they may stop ; and they do not look as
if they had ever known what sickness was. Several
are marked with small-pox; and cases of the loss of
an eye are frequent in the towns ; and we have ob-
served an unusual proportion, we think, of club-feet.
But in the faces and forms we see no signs of deficient
nourishment, or of the diseases which are generated
by bad air and light, damp, and over-crowding.

The testimony of good judges seems to be uniform
as to the industry of the labouring classes under fair
circumstances, — that is, when they can make money
only by industry, and when their labour is fairly paid.
If they can beg they will. If they fancy they can
find a short cut to wealth, they will try it, eagerly
enough; but, settled down under a just employer,
out of the track of tourists and of conflicting re-
ligionists, they will work as well as anybody. They
are also very provident. It is this part of the expe-
rience of the English settlers which has surprised them

104 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

most. The labourer will live upon almost nothing,
and lay by all he can save, till he has enough to take
him to England, or to America. He does not like to
be known to have anything ; so he will not let the
most honourable and benevolent gentleman take care
of his money, or put him in the way of getting inter-
est for it. The long accumulated suspicion of many
generations cannot be dispersed at once ; and the pea-
sant would rather forego the interest on his money
than let anybody know that he has it : so there is no
knowing what he does with it, except when he buys a
cow or other stock. The unwillingness of the people to
traffic — to sell anything that has once been their own
— has been already mentioned. They hold fast by
any investment they have made, and evidently con-
sider that they are robbed if they have to part with it.
At the time of the famine some persons went on their
own horses to obtain relief from the board ; and one
man got it who was found to have been, at the mo-
ment, the owner of fifteen cows. These were people
who would not have stolen anything under any pres-
sure ; but they had a notion that what was once theirs
was theirs always, by right. Wherever we have been,
and from all sorts of authorities, we have been assured
that there is a fine natural sense of justice among
the Irish, under whatever strange perversions : and it
certainly appears as if, among their most insuil'erable
encroachments and their wildest eccentricities, they
had some distorted conception of justice in their
minds. In school, and in domestic service, it is found
that they rather lack truthfulness ; that in regard to

t

THE PEOPLE AND THE CLERGY. 105

honesty, they are about on a par with tlie Enghsh
and that, as to other matters, their morality may be
sustained at a high point, if their sense of justice be
duly respected, and made the point of appeal. This
being the case, the shameless and absurd begging, by
those who are not in need, is indeed sadly infra dig.
The other day we were walking on a half-private road,
where two lads were raking and smoothing the ap-
proach to a pretty residence, by whose owner they
were employed and paid. They asked us for money
for mending the road, and were refused. A little
further on, their spade, of unusual shape, was stand-
ing against the wall. We felt the weiglit of it.
^' There, now,^' said they, "you must give us some-
thing for using our spade." " Give me a halfpenny,"
cried a girl. " What would you do with it if I gave
you one?" "I would buy a book with it." "Can
you read, then ?" " No." This one had the grace
to run away. Probably their parents, or the habit
of a life, may set these children and grown-up young
people to run miles after a car; but our impression
is, that they like the fun of it : and they certainly look as
well fed and merry as the tourists about whom they
swarm.

As for the other matter, it becomes a more painful
one to hear of, and witness, and tliink and speak about,
the further we go into the wilds. This is no reason
for silence, but the contrary. There is no need to ex-
plain that we are wholly unconnected with the con-
flicting religious " interests " in this country, and that
our sole " interest " is in seeing the people wise, good.

106 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

and happy. We have hitherto taken for granted that
the Catholic rehgion was a real faith to its professors,
animating their hopes, and more or less securing their
morals. We have steadily contended for their rights
of conscience, and, as they have been conventionally
(since they ceased to be legally) oppressed, we have
found our sympathies unavoidably siding with them —
including the priests with the laity. We are com-
pelled to say that the further we go, and the more w^e
learn, the more completely that sympathy dies away.
We little thought ever to have written this ; but this
is what w^e have to write. We find, from universal
testimony, — and by no means from that of the zealous
"Protestants" we have met, whose word we would
not take in this particular matter, — that it is a settled
thing in the popular mind that " the priest is no good
w^here there is no money."" Those who cannot say, of
their own knowledge, that it is true that the priests
refused the last offices "essential to salvation" to
those who could not pay, admit that everybody acts
on the certainty that it is useless to send to the priest
unless the fee is ready. Again, the fee must be ready,
if by any conceivable means it can be scraped together,
and for purposes incessantly recurring. A peasant
would never think of using a chair, or other article of
furniture, till it has been blessed by the priest, which
blessing costs half-a-crown. There is scarcely an in-
cident in life in wdiich the priest, and consequently
his fee, is not mixed up ; and we are unable to learn
what the priest does beyond such paid services as
these. lie is the policeman of his church; and it

THE PEOPLE AND THE CLERGY. 107

does not seem clear what he is besides. We have en-
deavoured to learn which alternative of two very sad
ones we must suppose to be real, — that the priest be-
lieves in the necessity of blessing furniture, and of ex-
treme unction, or that he does not. If he does, what
are we to think of his money stipulations ? If he does
not, what kind of a priest is he? In either case,
what is the plight of the people — of that multitude
whom I now see kneeling, not only on the steps of
the chapel opposite, but on the pavement outside the
railings, filling up its whole breadth ? The Catholic
and the Protestant zealots seem to be trjdng, as for a
wager, which can fastest drive the people into an igno-
rant contempt of all faiths whatever. The struggle
for victorv is as morallv bad for the ic^norant witnesses
as it is painful to those who are out of the battle.
They know very well that Protestant ladies are trying
in vain to get their tracts laid about in hotels, where
the Catholic or politic owners will not suffer them to
lie for an hour. Some have much sadder cause to
know what the conflict is. Yesterday, we were issu-
ing from the Killery Pass — feeling more as if we were
in Norway than anywhere else, with this true fiord
before our eyes — when we perceived (what is never to
be seen in Norway) a most wretched-looking hamlet,
in a slight hollow, high up on the mountain-side.
But for the hovering smoke, we should never have
supposed those cabins to be dwellings. We asked
what that wretched place was. " Oh," replied our Ca-
tholic di'iver, "the people there are all Jumpers"
(Protestants). We inquired further, not seeing the

108 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

connection between the religion and the wretchedness.
He said, in simple reply to our questions, that the
people were Jumpers because they were too poor to
help it. That the clergyman (whose pretty house he
pointed out) got money from England, and offered
work to everybody who would go to his church, and
refused it to all who went to mass. The priest had no
money, and so the people were obhged to be Jumpers ;
but they would not be so when they could help them-
selves. They loved the priest, and wished to go to
mass ; and when he called and threatened them with
what would happen if they did not, they promised to
go ; but they were obliged to break their promise or
starve. Such is the Catholic account of the matter,
on the spot. Whether the Protestants would allow
it to be correct or not, tliis report shows what is the
popular feeling on the subject of the religious con-
flict. Then we passed the new church, rising under
the hands of people thus driven to the work, and thus
" converted.^' Next, we met a band of boys, — clean,
intelligent-looking, and well-mannered. They pulled
their forelocks, and did not beg. We observed on this
to the driver, who said that children don^t beg on
their way to school. AU hail to the schools ! happen
what may outside. The schools are our ground of
hope : we were going to say our only ground of hope,
but we will not say that yet. Nor will we say what
the difficulty is of forming an opinion or a wish on the
management of ecclesiastical affairs in Ireland, till we
see whether more light arises from further travel.

109

LETTER XIV.

ENGLISH SETTLERS IN THE '' ^VILDS OF THE
WEST."

September 7, 1852.
These western wilds are the region for English settlers.
The further we proceed^ the more of them we find;
and we must say that, as far as our observation goes,
they seem to be heartily welcome. In old days we
used to believe (and we find that some residents think
so stiU) that the peasantry, all over Ireland, had a
strong distaste to working for wages ; and that the one
good thing in life, in their estimate, was to have a bit
of ground on which they might be independent. We
now find indications of a very different feeling wherever
Englishmen have settled. Mr. A. is a very fine man,
who employs sixty people or more, who would be
starving but for him. Mr. B. is a gentleman who has
a very fine wife, who has so many people come that
they keep much company, and spend a good deal of
money. Mr. C. has a very fine place and garden, and
it employed plenty of people for a long while to raise
it and get it into order. Mr. D. has a very fine mill ;
and it is a fine thing for the place — it employs so

110 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

many people. Mr. E. has a very fine farm, and the
people are sure of work and wages all the year round.
And so on, from one county to another, in the west.
Mr. Robertson, the agent on the Martin estates,
now the property of the Law Life Insurance Com-
pany, has lived in the country for many years and
is much esteemed and trusted by his neighbours. It
is he of whom we used to hear that he had no locks
and bars on his doors, as there was nobody to be afraid
of. He is the lessee of the Martin fisheries, and he
employs fifty persons, on tlie average of the year, on
the salmon-fishery near the Martins^ Castle. His bog
reclamations answer well, and employ much labour.
There was some discontent about the 196,000 acres
of that property being all transferred to one company;
but there was nothing else to be done, as the company
had claims exceeding the value of the whole estate.
It is not yet divided, to be sold in portions. It has
been so laid out that the saleable parts could not be
disposed of without throwing away every chance of
making anything of the more unproductive. Time
will remedy this ; and the management of the estate
will proceed with a view to a future division and sale.
Meanwhile, there is no necessity for a forcible clear-
ance, nor even for the company to enable the people
to emigrate. Some have earned the means, and are
gone ; and more employment is found for those who
remain. The other great domain, the D'Arcy estate
(about a fourth of the size of the Martins'), is divided,
and lias been sold in portions, of which two or three
are bought by Englishmen. Our guide at Clifden told

k

ENGLISH SETTLERS IN THE WEST. Ill

US that the castle and lands belonging to it are bought
by a " Mr. Eyre, the head banker of London."' Mr.
Scully, his agent, now resident at the castle, is grate-
fully spoken of throughout the neighbourhood, for
the pains he takes to improve the people's ways and
promote their welfare.

On leaving Chfden for the north, we see, on the
first water-power, and at the foot of a little wooded
ravine, a large mill, with a dwelling-house beside it.
A new settler lives here — with a Scotch name — and
he is evidently the great support of the population
round him. After ascending the swelling moorland
above, tc see, far off and away, the lovely coast, with
its bays, promontories, vaUeys, and islands — as sweet
a scene as ever basked in autumnal sunlight. The
driver points out what he calls the light on yonder
hill : this " light " being a clearing where green fields
and stubble shine amidst the surrounding moor. Tliis
is Mr. Twiniug's, of Clegan — too far off for us to visit;
but a letter of Mr. Twining's has been published,
in which he speaks hopefully of the capability of the
district. We turn down to the right, and see a
church, a large expanse of drained bog and of ad-
vanced cultivation; and a large, eccentric-looking
abode. This is Mr. Butler's, a settler of many years^
standino'. Some wav further on, amidst a scene of
remarkable beauty, there is a handsome house, with
its roof- tree just laid, and workmen busy about it.
In the sloping fallow before the door, two men are
harrowing. There is a pleasant and cheery look about
the place. It is Captain Retcher's. Then follow im-

].12 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

mediately half-a-dozen or so of brilliantly clean dwell-
ings, some gardens, really verdant fields, a post-office,
a shop, a school-house, up the hill on the left-hand
side ; and on the right, charmingly seated on its green
bank, and with garden sweets about it, the grey stone
house of James Ellis, whose name is his sufficient
eulogy. This Quaker family lives among an exclu-
sively Catholic peasantry, on terms which it would do
the conflicting zealots elsewhere good to witness, — if
they could go to hold their tongues and learn, instead
of preaching mischief where all is now peace. This
Priend, who values his own faith as much as any
M'Hale or Dallas, employs a large number of la-
bourers, who are all Catholics ; and they find they can
all be religious in their own way, without any strife.

Somewhat further on, towards Kylemore Lough, in
a solemn seclusion, at the foot of dark mountains,
stands the abode of Mr. Eastwood, another English
gentleman, who is improving a large estate there.
After that, there are no more dwellings for many
miles, except the little Kylemore Inn, and some cot-
tages beyond. The moorland is too wild for settle-
ment, and the misty mountains allow too little sun-
shine to encourage tillage. The singular and glorious
Killery follows, with its admirable road, one of the
benefits left behind by the lamented Alexander Ts^immo.
Then comes the Jumper village I told you of, with
its new church and pretty parsonage at the extremity
of the fiord. Further on, when the Connemara
mountains are left behind, and the moor looks as if
nobody had ever crossed it before, we come upon the

ENGLISH SETTLEES IN THE WEST. 113

plain, domestic-looking Catholic chapel, and, almost
within sight of it, the national school-house of Car-
rekenedy. That school-house is a pleasant token of
EngHsh care to Hght upon in the wilds.

We are now approaching Lord Sligo's property.
The road continues most excellent to witlnn five miles
of Westport, where Lord SHgo^s "demesne" skirts
the town. This young nobleman seems to be much
beloved, Protestant as he is, by his Catholic neigh-
bours. In the morning, one may see him handing
round the plate in his own church in the park for con-
tributions for Protestant schools, — the police of the
neighbourhood being on the floor of the church, and
the soldiers in the gallery; and in the evening you
may hear from his Catholic neighbours how good he
is, — how just and kind to his tenantry and labourers,
how generous as a family man, how self-denying under
the reduction of fortune caused by the adversity of the
country. The reduction of rents and increase of bui*-
dens that he has had to bear for his share are no secret,
and should be none. There is no disgrace in the fact;
and there is honour in the way in which it has been
met. Prom AYestport, for some miles on the road to
Newport and beyond it, the aspect of things is more
dreary than anything that had before met our eyes in
Ireland. We need not describe it. Those soaked,
and perished, and foul moorlands, relapsed from an
imperfect cultivation; those hamlets of unroofed
houses, with not above one or two roofs in sight;
little bridges, with their centre-stones tumbHng out ;
graveyards overgrown with thistles, while cattle go in

114 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

and out over the crumbling earthen fence; signs of
extensive former habitation, amidst which we may see
two or three human beings moving about hke chance
survivors of some plague, — these features of a lapsed
country are understood at a glance ; and here we found »

them. But presently we met a gentleman, riding a I

fine horse, and looking as if business carried him on
so briskly. He touched his hat : we inquired who he
was, and found he was another English settler — Cap-
tain Houston — who is gratefully spoken of for his
excellent and extensive farming; and he is only one
of seven or eight settlers who have large farms near
Westport.

As soon as we enter the island of Achill we see a
large house half built ; and superintending the work
is the owner, Mr. Pike, a magistrate of the island —
better known as the late chairman of the committee
of the Birkenhead improvements. This gentleman is
one of the party of friends to whom one-half of the
island of Achill has lately been sold ; the other half
being purchased by the Protestant mission in the is-
land. The island — not much smaller than the Isle
of Wight — has been for seventy-two years the pro-
perty of the O^Donnells. By the recent sales in the
Incumbered Estates Court of the lands of Sir Richard
O'Donnell, this little dominion has come into the
hands of English improvers. Mr. Pike employed
fifty people last winter. At this season, when they
can well take care of themselves by harvest-work,
etc., he dismisses them, to be taken on again as soon
as they "feel the pinch," as they say. He is going

ENGLISH SETTLERS IN THE WEST. 115

to plant very largely. His experience in the plant-
ing of the new park at Birkenhead, and the skill of a
man whom he has brought over to direct this part of
the business, guarantee his success ; and in half a
century there may be woods clothing the bases of the
magnificent hills of A chill, sheltering its valleys, and
imparting an air of civiHzation to the wildest shores
that the most romantic traveller could wish to see.
We have more to say about Achill hereafter. Our
mention of it now is merely in connection with the
subject of the settlement of Englishmen in Con-
naught.

The one thing that everybody — high and low, Pro-
testant and Catholic — says about this is, that Ireland
is perishing for want of capital ; that there has been
too much labour ; that the land is very fine, and the
sea most productive, — that there is, in short, every
conceivable material of human welfare, if only the
people had the means of obtaining and using them.
We hear, in these western parts, no political mur-
muring whatever. O^ConneU's name has never once
been mentioned to us since we landed, except when
we were passing his house in Merrion-square, Dublin,
and looking at his door-plate : nor has Eepeal been
spoken of, except when the subject was introduced by
ourselves. The complaint is of want of capital; and
the settlers are popular because they bring it.

All the while, Lish capitalists were keeping money
invested in public securities to the amount of nearly
forty millions, up to the time of the opening of the
Incumbered Estates sales. Yery few English and

116 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

Scotch have been purchasers there, in comparison
with the Irish. Out of the first five hundred and
eighty-seven purchasers, only thirty were EngHsh and
Scotch. The capitaKsts of Ireland are not the pau-
perized tenants and embarrassed landlords ; and hence
it is that the English settlers are so welcome as they
are. But that there are capitalists enough in Ireland
to redeem her from her poverty is proved by the
equality of the rate of interest received by holders of
stock in Ireland and England. (The 1 per cent,
more charged on Irish mortgages is owing to the
greater irregularity and risk in Ireland, and so is the
limit of 6 instead of 5 per cent, in the usury laws.)
As long as tens of thousands of Irish capitalists send
forty millions of money to England, to receive only
3i per cent, for it, it is clear that the thing wanted
in this undeveloped country is not capital, but in-
ducement to employ it as strangers are beginning to
do. It is with great pleasure that we find how very
large a majority of the purchasers in the Incumbered
Estates Court are Irisli ; and yet it is with great plea-
sure that we see our countrymen scattered over these
western wilds, each a centre of industry and a source
of plenty. The Irish purchasers furnish a practical
answer to the complaint of want of native capital :
and the Enghsh and Scotch open up a prospect of
national union, political peace, and social regeneration
in that part of the United Kingdom which the most
sorely needs it.

117

I

LETTER XY.

ACHILL.

Sejotemher 14, 1852.
Twenty years ago, there were no roads iu the Island
of Achill. The people were as truly savage as any
South Sea Islanders. AT hen we were crossing the
mountain — walking along precipices at a great height
above the sea, on our way to Keem — we were told by
a gentleman who has known the place for a quarter of
a century, that we could not have taken that walk
twenty years since, for fear of the natives. The island,
whose coast measures eighty miles, was then one vast
tract of moorland, yielding nothing but grouse and
fish. Its boats were the old curraghs, frames of wood
covered with tarred canvas, as indeed too many of
them are stiU. Of all the poor inhabitants of the
west of Ireland, the very poorest were the people of
AchilL. They were then to others what the people of
South Inniskea now are to them; the people who
worship a stone, dressing it in woollen, and praying
to it for wrecks !

The first road in Achill was made by the Govern-
ment about twenty years ago; and there are now

118 LETl'ERS FROM IRELAND.

several : but so few in proportion to the extent of the
island^ that the traveller is annoyed at the loss of time
and the fatigue incurred by the great circuits that
have to be made to get from place to place ; and there
is no making any short cuts, as the whole surface is
bog. Before there was any road, there was a coast-
guard ; and a tower, conspicuous on a mountain,
shows where an officer and a few soldiers were sta-
tioned in the days of the war, looking over the sea in
opposite directions, and keeping watch against inva-
sion. The coast-guard were less " duir' then than
now. Smart affairs with smugglers were of frequent
occurrence in the days of high duties, when the deep
coves of Achill offered great facilities for introducing
a variety of articles from France, Holland, etc. At
present there is no smuggHng whatever, and the coast-
guard find their station horribly dull.

Seventeen years ago the Protestant mission, of
which so much good and evil has been said, was es-
tablished in Achill. Mr. Nangle is now about to
leave the station which he has held through this long
course of years. He is going to a rather humble living
in Shgo county. Our impression is that when he has
left his work, and the result of his sojourn can be
estimated with impartiahty, he will be founil to have
borne a great deal with courage and patience, and to
have done a great deal of good. Whether there have
been faults in the doing of his work we have no wish
to inquire. Our business is with the results, and they
have satisfied us that Mr. Nangle^s residence has been
a great blessing to Achill. In the early part of his

ACHILL. 119

residence there his life was in danger : he was thrice
shot at, and once knocked down by a stone, and
nearly killed. It is told with laughter now in the
drawing-rooms at Achill, that in those days there was
only one hat on the island (outside the mission, we
suppose) ; that it was hung on a pole near the Sounds
whence it was taken by any person going to the main-
land, to be hung up again on his return. Now, there
are schools, not only at the mission settlement, but
scattered about the island, where boys and girls are
taught in both the Irish and English languages. We
saw the eager, intelligent, vigilant little boys of Keel
— the Catholic Keel — at school, and we saw that there
was no dawdling there. The school was dark and
poor-looking, but the children were wide awake, and
well-mannered, and clean, though, of course, barefoot
and ragged. The houses of the settlement occupy
two sides of a square ; and apart stands, on a third
side, the dwelUng of Mr. Nangle. There is a little
church, and a post-office, and a humble inn; the
houses are all whitewashed, and all but one slated.
On a hill behind Mr. Nangle^s are some unroofed
cottages ; and close by, a more dreary sight still, the
hamlet of Dugort on the cliff, with its filth and appa-
rent misery. We inquired how it could have hap-
pened that, in full view of the settlement, this place
could, at the end of seventeen years, be what it is ?
The answer was that the property of the place has till
now been Sir Richard O'Donnell's, and that all the
mission could do was to educate the cliildren of the
Catholic parents Hving there, hoping for the effects to

120 LETTERS FEOM IRELAND.

appear in the next generation — as in Keel and other
CathoHc places. 'Now, the mission having bought
half the island, the influence of its presence upon the
population may be expected to be much greater.

It has already been very great. The skirts of
Slievemore, the highest mountain in Achilla which
rises behind the settlement, are enhvened with tillage,
from a considerable height down to the boggy plain.
It is a cheering sight to see the farmhouse from afar
off, with its range of handsome stacks, and the sloping
fields, some with green crops (so green in contrast
with the bog), and others with oats and rye falling
under the sickle of the reapers. It is cheering to see
the healthy faces of the women, who, a dozen in com-
pany, file out of the field by the roadside, each carry-
ing a horse-load of fine oats to the stack. It is
cheering to see the boys — ready for a job, but not
begging, and looking like civilized beings. The wo-
men we meet in the road are knitting. The people
in the fields are really working hard. There is life
throughout the settlement. That much a stranger
can see for himself, without entering into any dis-
putes as to whether things might have been done
better. There are contradictions among the residents
as to whether the children are or are not improved in
morals, in truthfulness, and honesty, by the education
at the Mission Schools. One em])loycr says they are,
another says they are not ; but the last admits that
this may be from the influence of the parents, and
the habits of many generations overwhelming that of
the recent education.

ACIIILL. 121

Por a long course of years there was a quietness
which might almost be called peace in Acliill. The
mission pursued its work quietly ; and the ishind was
blessed with a quiet priest, who diligently minded liis
own business, of which he had quite enough, and let
other people alone. Before the famine there were
6000 people in Achill; and there are now about
4000, — a population sufficient to occupy the clerg}',
without leaving time for quarrels. But, since the
Papal aggression business, the renowned ^' John
Tuam^' has become dissatisfied with the quiet priest,
who is understood to have had the utmost difficulty
in keeping his situation, and who is virtually super-
seded by a priest of the temper of "Jolin Tuam"
himself. The last petty sessions show what a state
the island is now in, and is likely to be in lienceforth.
A month ago Dr. M'Hale visited the island, and
opened a Catholic chapel not far from the settlement.
He left behind him the two priests who are to be
tried for assaults on the Scripture Readers belonging
to the mission. Without prejudging a matter which
stands over for trial"^, we can state these particulars of
the case which are declared and admitted on both
sides. The admitted facts are, according to the re-
port of petty sessions, that the two priests collected
the people in the \illage of Keel (Catholic, and the
largest place on the island); that they supported each
other in instigating the attack by which a Scripture
Header was stoned, knocked down among the turf,

* One priest has been since convicted, and fined £5. We do not
know the fate of the other.

122 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

and beaten; that one of these priests, foaming at
the mouth with passion, called the readers " damned
devils/^ and the Protestants "juniper devils ^^ and
" stirabout jumpers ;' that he charged the parents
with sending their children to school to lose their
souls, to be "justified by stirabout and redeemed by
porridge " that he bade the people " scald, scald^,
and persecute to death''' the Protestants of Achill;
that he pronounced his curse and the curse of God
on any one who should sell them a pint of milk or a
stone of potatoes ; that he said he had but one life,
and he " would willingly give it to drive out these
devils, and see Achill great, glorious, and free, as it
was before they came/' An impartial person, arrived
from a place where such quarrels are not heard of,
happened to be present, and to see the convulsive
rage of one of these priests ; to see him run after a
woman, who escaped by a stratagem from liis blows ;
to hear him say that to think of the settlement made
his hair stand on end ; to see him endeavour to enter
the girls' school, presided over by a modest young
woman ; and to hear him, when the door was (by
order of her superiors) shut against him, shout out
against her, in the hearing of the crowd, names too
foul for repetition !

In following a road across the bog, towards the
north-east of the island, we came upon piles of stones
which scarcely left room for the car to pass. On in-

* Scalding seems a favourite idea witli tlic priests. " May the
Almighty scald your soul, when you come to die !" is one of their
imprecations : in one case used hy a hishop to a convert.

i

ACHILL. 12;3

quiry we found that a nunnery is about to be built
there — another broad hint of the religious warfare
which may be expected now that Dr. M^Hale's at-
tention is riveted upon Achill. It was by mere ac-
cident that we discovered that^ of all the population
of the Catholic village of Keel^ there are no adults
who dare go out after nightfall, for fear of the fairies.
Dr. M'Hale's emissaries fear nothing so much as the
emancipation of the people from fear; and nothing
arouses their wrath so quickly as the sight of that
book in which the people read, " For ye have not re-
ceived the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love,
and of a sound mind." A tract has been published
(in not the best spirit) which contains the report of
the trial of a Sligo priest, some time ago, for an assault,
— the motto of which tract is, ^^The servant of the Lord
must not strive," etc. That priest was punished by
imprisonment, and his flock and their neighbours re-
gard the sentence as a piece of Protestant persecution,
and English oppression of Ireland. On the other
hand, the Catholics complain that disreputable con-
verts, and men who will do anything for a mainte-
nance, are sent out by the Protestant zealots to dis-
tribute tracts and read the Scriptures ; and that they
go armed with leaden life-preservers, with which they
lay about them, on women and others, on the shghtest
occasion, or none. Thus is the rehgion of peace
preached in these parts.

Our visit to Keel was on our way to the most ro-
mantic and melancholy spot that even romantic and
sombre Achill can show ; the place which once was

124

LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

Keem — still spoken of iu the Irish guide-books as
living, and moving, and having a being on earth.
Proceeding from Keel, we went through the village
of Dooagh — sordid, like the rest — and began to
mount by a good hill-road, till we found ourselves
at a grand height above the sea, which, seen from
hence, had the deep blue of the Mediterranean. The
view of the coasts was superb, from the precipices
of Achill, where a woman and seven children were
blovvn into the sea, from the mountain path, one
stormy night, to the faint, far distant headlands of
Connemara. We saw the entrance of the Killeries,
and Clew Bay with its islands (like a shoal of seals),
and many islands and rocks besides, with here a glit-
tering lighthouse, and there a few scattered boats —
mere black specks on the shining sea. Another
turn, and a most touching scene was before us. The
road — a very good one, in excellent repair — wound
down and down to a little cove where the waters, in
the shadow of the rocks, were of emerald green, and
the narrow beach of the purest sand. On a green
slope behind, under the shelter of high mountains
which clasped it round, stood the remains of Keem,
— a village of roofless stone cottages, now becoming
grass-grown, and silent as the death that laid it waste.
The people lived chiefly by fishing; but they had
some potato-grounds too. When weakened by the
famine (which they had somehow struggled through),
the cholera came upon them, and carried off a third
of their number. The rest went away — some to
America, others to wherever they could find food. So

ACHILL. 125

the eagles look down from their perch on the ridges
above, and see only the places where people once were
— smugglers of old, and fishermen since. There is
a little potato-patch on the margin of the sand ; and
one solitary roofed dwelling stands beside it. Some
way up the hill- side there is a heap of stones among
the heather, and a man or boy may now and then be
seen searching and knocking among the stones. This
is what is called the amethyst-mine, and some fine
amethysts have, we are told, been found there.

The best tillage is towards the south of the island,
where oats grow to great perfection, as well as the
other crops mentioned before. The freshwater lakes
yield trout of a large size; and the sea is alive with
fish. Fine lobsters may be had for 2^. each, and
turbot for 1*. 6^. Geese are 10^. each; and they
and fowls abound all along the road. A fine dairy
of cows wends its periodical way to the settlement.
There seems no reason why the island, now so fairly
brought under the notice of the friends of the Irish,
should not support, in comfort, its present number of
inhabitants, and twice as many as it has ever had. It
will be a dreadful scandal if its prospects are broken
up in the name of rehgion.

126

LETTER XVI.

THE WILDS OF ERRIS.

Sejjtember 11, 1852.
We have crossed the wilds of Erris — the wiklest dis-
trict of Ireland, aud the scene of the worst horrors of
the famine. Of the horrors of the famine we shall say
nothing here. It is more profitable to look at the
present state of the district, to see if future famines
cannot be avoided.

The district of Erris extends north of a line drawn
from the two great mountains, Nephin and Croagh
Patrick, or the Reek — a holy mountain, to which the
people make pilgrimages. Eew but sportsmen and
poor-law officials know much about Erris. Snipe and
trout abound among its blue lakes and ponds, and
grouse among the heather, which extends as far as
the eye can reach. Police barracks, brilliantly white-
washed, glitter here and there; and near them may
be seen a shooting-box, a public-house, and a few cot-
tages. But in one place, at least, and probably more,
the high road passes through wilds where no dwelling
is seen for miles. The traveller must amuse himself
with the vegetation, the various heaths, the exquisite

THE WILDS OF ERRIS. 127

ferns, the marsh willows, the bog-cotton waving in the
wind, and the bog myrtle ; or with the cranes, fishing
from a stone ; or with the moor game, poking up their
heads from the heather ; or with the snipe, swinging
on a bulrush ; or he may feast his eyes on the outlines
and shadowy hollows of the distant mountains; for
of human beings he mil see none for miles together.
When he does, it will be a policeman buying apples of
a brown-faced countrywoman ; or a young lady, with
a letter for the mail-car — a young lady dressed in a
white muslin gown with flounces, with hair in ringlets,
and no stockings or shoes ; or it may be a Londoner,
with gun and dog, seeking sport ; or a merry peasant
boy, with his donkey and load of turf. The sudden
changes of scene are remarkable; for instance, the
finding a fair going on at Bangor — a place of half-a-
dozen houses. A company of constabulary are in the
road, ready for the fray, which is sure to take place
at nightfall, when the people have drunk enough to be
quarrelsome. Women in scarlet and yellow shawls
are tripping hither over the bog, carrying their shoes
and stockings. Maudhn men are swearing eternal
friendship, and shaking hands with the landlady of
the only pubHc-house, which is so crowded that the
poor woman does not know which way to turn herself.
Amidst all the noise and signs of drink, and sights
of folly, the stranger cannot but remark that he never
saw such health in his life before. Throughout this
part of the country the old maxim will recur to him,
however he may abhor it — "the fewer the better
cheer." Our business is to tell of things as they are,

128 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

and not to sentimentalize about how they might be
expected to be; so we state that where one cottage
remains inhabited among half-a-dozen that are un-
roofed, there may romping be seen before the door, and
loud mirth be heard from within. Many a laughing
party may be seen round a huge pile of smoking pota-
toes, in a dirty cabin. The pig is cordially invited to
the fire-side, and a great potful of potatoes is emptied
before him. Boys and girls show splendid rows of
teeth as the car approaches, and, with grins and
antics, shout and race after it, putting to flight all the
traveller's preconceptions about the melancholy left
behind by the famine.

Another kind of change occurs when he draws near
Belmullet. He suddenly observes that the rude fences
are apparently built of marble — of glittering and veined
blocks of the purest white. He has entered upon a
new limestone district; and he knows he may now
look for verdure instead of brown heather. He enters
the pretty little valley of Glencastle, and finds its sides
bristling with wood, and its slopes carpeted with
green. On the upland is a fine harvest of oats, stand-
ing in shocks. As he advances, the scene opens finely,
the great Blacksod Bay being on his left hand (some-
times hidden by sloping fields), and on his right the
beautiful bay of Broadhaven, like a great lake shut in
by yellow beaches and mountains of most varied out-
line. Presently the town of Belmullet comes in sight,
with its pubhc works, its wharfs, its drawbridge, and
cutting, and all the apparatus of a commerce which
does not exist. This town, where a coast-guard in-

THE WILDS OF ERRIS. 129

spector resides, is remembered as the head- quarters of
the famine, where the clergyman and the inspector
and their assistants were almost killed with toil and
sorrow, — the toil of serving out the meal, night and
day, and the sorrow of seeing the dead and d\ing
heaped before their doors.

The dead and dying were brought from all places
round : but chiefly from the Mullet — the remarkable
peninsula which obtrudes itself into the sea beyond
the town. It was this peninsula that we traversed
Erris to see — that we might be sure that we had wit-
nessed the worst of the wrecks left by the famine.
Tew have seen them, but those whose business lies
among them. The waiter at the inn testified his
pleasure at having guests to make welcome, so very
few go there ; and when we left he wished we could
have stayed longer. In the centre of the town there
is an air of some pretension, and some look of com-
fort ; but the outskirts are miserable enough. All this
is forgotten however on approaching Binghamstown,
the most shocking wreck that we have seen, except
perhaps one other village in another part of Mayo.
We found more inhabitants remaining than Ave had
expected, and they did not look personally miserable
at all. But the lines of ruin where there was once a
street, the weeds and filth about the deserted hearth-
stones, or (what seemed almost worse) the crops of
potatoes and cabbages grown on the floors where dead
neighbours lived so lately, made our very hearts sick.
The Catholic chapel is not considered at all in a ruinous
state in comparison with other places, yet its windows

g3

130 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

are half boarded up^ its walls are mouldy, and half
the cross on its roof is gone. The large white house
near was the seat of a gentleman, of one of the ancient
families of Ireland. After a long struggle with em-
barrassments, he was too weak to bear the stress of ",
the famine year. He let his house for a workhouse,
and was thankful to be made its master. In those
ancestral rooms he ruled as master — not of his own
house, but of the workhouse ! He soon died. One
of his sons is, we are told, there now as a pauper.
His widow and daughters live in an ordinary labourer's
cottage near. One such tale is enough, and we will
tell no more.

The soil is considered excellent all along the Mullet;
and, near Belmullet, the rising grounds were covered
with harvests, bristling with ' stocks' of fine oats.
Eurther on, there were enclosures everywhere, show-
ing what the cultivation had been; but there was
little growth of anytliing. Some of the fields were •

lapsing into mere waste; in others, cattle were |

grazing. On either hand the most lovely bays ran •

into the land — bays always alive with fish. Yet we
saw only one net, in our drive of fourteen miles and
back again. The usual declaration is, that the people
cannot fish, for want of boats and nets, which they
are too poor to obtain; but we saw a sight to-day
which told a worse tale than even this. Seeing some-
thing like a deserted windmill without its sails, we
inquired what it was, and found it was a curing-house,
going to ruin. An Englishman had come here to
establish a fishery. He knew his business; but he

I

THE WILDS OF ERUIS. 131

did not know the people who were to do it. He was
right about the fitness of the place for a profitable
fishery ; but he was wrong in supposing that his fish-
ery must therefore be profitable. The people ruined
his project, the success of which would have made
their fortune, as well as his. They asked for advances
of wages — one half-a-crown — another eighteenpence,
and so on ; and then they went off without doing their
work. His money melted away, and he departed,
leaving the curing-house to rot on the shore of the
bay which swarms with fish. And still we are met
with the plea that the people are too poor to have
boats and nets ; and with complaints that capitaKsts
do not come and settle, to develop the natural wealth
of the district. Once more we ask why 20,000 Irish
capitalists invest nearly £40,000,000 in the English
funds, while such natural riches remain to be deve-
loped at home ; and, again, we have to pause long for
a reply.

We have said, in a former letter, that English set-
tlers appear to be heartily welcome in the west of Ire-
land. Yet, since we wrote that, we have been where
an English gentleman found, one morning lately, that
the tails of all his horses were cut off. An Enghsh
clergyman found, another morning, that one ear of his
saddle horse had been cut off in the night. This last
act is probably ascribable to theological hatred. As
to the other, it appears that the good feehng towards
settlers does not always extend to those who make
the rearing of stock their object. They buy up or
lease land for a sum or rent nearlv nominal, when, as

132 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

in the case of Lord Sligo^s lands, the depreciation in
value is excessive. They graze their cattle for almost
nothing, employing next to no labour, and make vast
profits. There is nothing really unfair in this. They
give what the land, in a season of adversity, will bring,
and they use it in a way most profitable to themselves.
Nobody has a right to complain of this as dishonest.
But we cannot wonder if the suffering neighbours are
quick to feel the difference between this method of
settUng and that of men who come to till the ground
and employ labour. Men see cattle growing fat
among the enclosures where their neighbour's homes
used to be. Their neighbours are gone — over the sea
or into the grave — for want of work and food, and
one herd of cattle succeeds another, to be sent away
to England, and fill English pockets with wealth,
while the Irish peasant remains as poor as ever. And
Avithin sight, perhaps, there is another Enghsh settler,
who employs all the labour round him, and who
says that if the land were made the most of, the
country would be found to be much under-peopled.
The peasantry cannot but draw comparisons between
the two orders of settlers. That they should cut off
horses' tails is horrible. That they should feel that
the graziers could not be making such fortunes, if
calamity had not, for tlie time, annihilated the value
of land, is natural and unavoidable. That the ex-
tension of tillage will in time restore the value of
depreciated lands, and rectify the balance between
grazing and cultivation, is the issue to which we
must look, and for which we would fain persuade the

THE WILDS OF ERRIS. 133

people to wait with patience. But what patience is
needed ! In answer to our inquiry^ whether the con-
dition and prospects of the people on or near the
Mullet were improving, the constant answer was —
" In comparison with the famine years, yes, of course.
In comparison with the years before the famine, no.
"We have no trade — no resources. "Where is the im-
pro\^ement to come from ?^' And truly when we had
passed through a few more of the depopulated villages
on the Mullet, and seen the mere remnant of people
that hang about that tract which might be so fertile,
we could not but echo the question, " "Where is im-
provement to come from ?" Yet, we cannot but feel
that it will come, so rich are the means which Nature
has laid there, readv to the hand of man.

134

LETTEE XYTI.

CASTLEBAR— PAUPERS— EMIGRANT FAMILY.

Sejoteinher 12, 1852,
Ballina is the most prosperous-looking town we have
seen for some time. The reason, no doubt, is, its
good situation on the Moy, and its fine salmon-fishery,
which is next in importance to that of the Bann. As
we drew near to it, we observed signs of a brisker in-
dustry. We passed a really good farm, with a com-
fortable house upon it ; with an orchard fuU of fruit,
rows of well-grown trees pleasantly shading the road
without damaging the fields. We passed a stock-
master, who inquired of us about a stray bullock. He
had purchased about three hundred head of cattle, at
an average of £5 each, and was removing them home,
in the north. We saw spinning in the cottages, and
a cart full of ropes made of the bent, or coarse grass,
which grows on the shores. In the town, the people
Were walking about as if they had business to do :
and there was a look about shops and offices which
showed that they really had it to do. Having read
that Ballina was the third town in Alayo, while Castle-
bar was the first, we thoughtlessly expected to find

CASTLEBAR. 135

Castlebar yet brisker than Ballina, — forgetting that
Castlebar has no manufacture, and no facilities for
trade, — forgetting, also, the singular letter of Lord
Lucan, as Chairman of the Board of Guardians, about
the repayment of the advances made by England at
the time of the famine. When we saw the state of
the town, and found that we were close by the gate of
Lord Lucan^s park, all this flashed upon us ; and we
set about seeing and learning what we could of this
noted place and its condition. Before we thus put
ourselves on the watch, we were struck by the num-
ber of one-eyed people we met in the streets — three in
a trice, on our entrance into the town. We had seen
none such in the wilds; and we have learned to re-
gard these remains of ophthalmia as a token of misery
endured in the workhouse, or some other crowded
receptacle of destitution. We have heard from an
eminent surgeon, entreated to advise what was to be
done, when guardians were at their wits^ ends, what a
spectacle it was to see 300 poor creatures down in
ophthalmia, on the floor of a low-ceiled malt-house —
one of the auxiliary houses of a union down in the
south-west. In all workhouses, eye complaints seem
to be the besetting ailment. In some of the L-ish,
they are not found at all ; in others, their virulence is
dreadful. " You must buy a green field,^^ said the
gentleman; ^^and you must get a large airy house."
They would do anything — anytliing in the world.
" Yes," rephed he ; " you had better, for (adapting
his appeal to the supposed quality of his hearers) if a
man dies it will cost you only 35. 6^. to bury him ;

136 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

but if these people live blind (and blind people always
do live), it will cost you £4. 155. per annum each to
maintain them as long as they live.''' We are sorry
to see by the last report of the Poor Law Commis-
sioners that the disease was still on the increase at the
date of that report,, the number of cases during 1851
amounting to nearly 46,000. Of these above 40,000
were cured; but 263 persons lost both eyes, 656 lost
one eye, and 754 sustained otherwise more or less in-
jury to sight. Many more must have suffered out of
the workhouses ; and indeed, considering the healthy
appearance of the people in other respects, the num-
ber of one-eyed persons in the towns is a striking cir-
cumstance to a stranger.

While within the town of Castlebar there is a ge-
neral air of poverty and negligence, there are in the
neighbourhood a good many unfinished roads — those
melancholy roads which have occasioned so much
controversy and ill-will. It is strange to mount pain-
fully up a hill, by a newly-mended road, in order to
go down again on the other side, overlooking all the
while a grass -grown road winding round the base
of the hill, and to hear that that shut-up way is one
of the famine-roads, which has never been finished.
It is as sad as strange to sec how many of these liave
never been finished. Though nothing can excuse the
language of the repudiating guardians, it is impossible
to be on the spot without sympatliizing in their mor-
tification at the way in which the money from Govern-
ment was spent, and their remonstrance against being
made answerable for it. There are persons — calm and

CASTLEBA.R. 137

benevolent observers — who say that an infinity of
good might have been done where now the insult
will never be forgotten of applying a labour test to
men who dropped fainting or dying on the road. The
men who were to earn their meal by working on the
roads, could not work on the roads for want of that
very meal. It was a pity to think of tests at all, under
the peculiar circumstances of the time. The right
way would have been, according to these authorities,
to say to the landlords, " No, you must not eject your
tenants ; that will ruin everybody. Government will
secure you against your tenants, under certain condi-
tions. Good farming must go on, or be begun where
as yet unknown. Good teaching and due means shall
be provided ; your sustained rental will repay our
advances ; or, if not, we shall repay ourselves in kind.
Thus will the value of the land be supported ; our ad-
vances will be reproductive; the horrors of e^'iction
will be avoided ; and the rates will be kept moderate."
It is believed that such a scheme could not have cost
more at the time than the plans actually adopted ; and

now But there is no need to describe again

the condition of the land and the people, with unfin-
ished roads running in among them, as if to mock the
deterioration of the land, and exasperate the temper
of the people. Lord Lucan has taken into his own
hands large tracts of land round, we might almost
say in, Castlebar, and is raising stock at a great rate.
The people do not like it : that is, they had rather see
the land under tillage ; but then, much of it is under
tillage, for the use of the stock. TVe saw many acres

138 LETTERS FllOM IRELAND.

of turnips, which looked well. Like otlier landlords
in the distressed chstricts, he has, no doubt, suffered
bitterly; and no one can wonder that he makes
the most profitable use of his lands. It was an
agreeable surprise to us to find that he was doing so ;
for certainly nothing can well look more forlorn and
neglected than the estate on which he lives adjoining
the town. Its untended woods and lumpy grass, and
mouldy appearance altogether, would never suggest
that its owner was a great stock-breeder. Meantime,
the workhouse — the scene of his lordship's exploits
as chairman and addresser of the Government — is in
a more hopeful state than formerly, inasmuch as there
are now only (if we remember right) 550 inmates
instead of 3000.

There is much controversy there, as in many other
places, about Avhat should be done with these paupers.
The ratepayers complain that hundreds of persons
whom they feed and shelter are idling away their
time, doing absolutely nothing, within the walls.
They ask why the land which Lord Lucan once let
for the purpose was not tilled by the labour of these
people, and why Lord Lucan has taken it back into his
own hands. The reply is, that the labour of the pau-
pers cannot be made to support the institution, or they
would not need to be there. In fact, the number of
able-bodied men in the workhouses is now very small ;
and the women are usually not more than suffice,
under the apathy of compulsory labour, to do what
is wanted in the house. The greater number of the
inmates are aged, sick, or children. If they are

I

CASTLE BAR. 139

idle, that is really a fault of somebody's. If, by being
idle is meant only that they do not support their
workhouse by their own labour, that cannot be helped.
The spirit of the controversy has however entered
the house itself. A number of young women, who
declare themselves healthy and active, have sent up
their petition to the Board of Guardians to be aided
to emigrate. Their letter bears, to our eyes, strong
marks of having been composed for them; but, on
examination by the Board, they have confirmed all
that it declares about their indignation at their com-
pulsory dependence and idleness, and their claim to
be placed where they can work for their own support.
So the guardians declare in their favour, and steps are
to be taken to get them sent away.

The population of Castlebar was, if we were cor-
rectly informed, 6000 before the famine; and it is
now between 3000 and 4000. Many have gone to
the grave; but more have removed to other countries.
Large sums are arriving by post, to carry away many
diore. We were yesterday travelling by the public
car, when, at the distance of a few miles from Cas-
tlebar, on approaching a cluster of houses, we were
startled — to say the truth, our blood ran cold — at
the loud cry of a young girl who ran across the road,
with a petticoat over her head, which did not conceal
the tears on her convulsed face. A crowd of poor
people came from — we know not where — most of
them in tears, some weeping quietly, others with
unbearable cries. A man, his wife, and three young
children were going to America. They were well

140 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

dressed^ all shod, and the little girls bonneted. There
was some delay — much delay — about where to put
their great box; and the delay was truly painful.
Of all the crowd, no one cast a momentary glance at
anybody but the departing emigrants. The inqui-
sitiveness, the vigilance, the begging, characteristic
of those who surround cars, were all absent. All eyes
were fixed on the neighbours who were going away
for ever. The last embraces were terrible to see ; but
worse were the kissings and the claspings of the hands
during the long minutes that remained after the wo-
man and children had taken their seats. When we
saw the wringing of hands and heard the wailings,
we became aware, for the first time perhaps, of the
full dignity of that civilization which induces control
over the expression of emotions. All the while that
this lamentation was giving a headache to all who
looked on, there could not but be a feehng that these
people, thus giving a free vent to their instincts, were
as children, and would command themselves better
when they were wiser. Still, there it was, the pain
and the passion : and the shrill united cry, when the
car moved on, rings in our ears, and long will ring
when we hear of emigration. They threw up their
arms and wailed. AVhen a distant turn in the road
showed the hamlet again, we could just distinguish
the people standing where we left them. As for the
family, — we could not see the man, who was on the
other side of the car. The woman's face was soon like
other people's, and the children were eating oatcake
very composedly.

CASTLEBAR. 141

There were no signs of affliction in them. It is de-
nied here that the people are eager to go, as the news-
papers assert. They go, we are told, because they
must. Our own impression is that the greater number
go without knowing much about it, because others
have gone, or because they are sent for, or because
they have a general idea that it is a fine thing for
them. Many, of course, are more fully aware what
they are about ; but we do not see reason to suppose
that political discontent has anything to do with it.
We saw at Castlebar a print of O^Connell (as we had
once before), but it was soiled and torn, and poked
into a damp corner out of the way. If any ill-feeling
towards the English has come under our notice at all
(amidst much good- will towards British settlers), it is
merely in connection with Protestant proselytism —
and of that there is likely to be plenty more if the
Protestant zealots go on doing as some of them are
doing now.

142

LETTER XVIII.

IRISH LANDLORDS AND IRISH POTATOES.

September 17, 1852.
When we chance to pick up an English newspaper,
here in the west — a thing which does not happen
often — we usually meet with some remark on the dis-
crepancy between the various accounts of the state of
the potato-crop. Nobody knows, by reading the
newspapers, what to believe or expect. There are
more reasons than one for this variation of accounts.
No doubt the disease is worse in some parts of the
island than in others; and no doubt many scores of
acres of potatoes have turned out good for something,
after they had been despaired of. But a new light on
this matter has dawned upon us since we have come
down from the wilds of Erris, and from the districts
where EngHsh and Scotch settlers may be found, to
a more thoroughly Irish part of the country, where
there is less religious animosity, and more of the land-
lord and tenant strife. We arc coming into the re-
gions of landlord-hating ; and very sad and terrible are
the evidences we have met of the state of feeling exist-
ing towards the landlords, on the part of — not the pea-

IRISH LANDLORDS AXD IRISH POTATOES. 143

santrj, for of that we know nothing substantial as yet,
but of the middle class. You may wonder what this
has to do with the variety in the reports of the potato
failure. Thus it is. The poor people keep up their
furor for the potato, — though they will, because they
must, eat Indian meal, more or less. But you may
see, by the roadside, or sitting on walls, or crouching
by the threshold, children munching raw potato"^ as
English children munch apples. The mother pares
and quarters a raw potato, and indulges the cliildren
with it. These people will not believe, till the last
minute, that the potato will fail. They are saying
now, after those above them, that we have had the
seven years of famine, and that next year plenty will
come again. The landlord is just as slow of belief.
He watches the growth of the potato with the keenest
anxiety ; he holds his tongue about any reports of its
failure that he may hear ; and, when the failure can-
not be concealed, he makes the least of it, and is cer-
tain that it is owing to this or that accident, and that
it is not likely to happen again. It is not that he is
thinking about the prospects of the winter and spring,
and of his rates. He is thinking not of his rates, but
of his rents. There seems to be no doubt that the
landlords are virtually in league with the peasantry, to
keep up the depedencne of the labouring classes on the

* An Irish friend protests against this statement, saying that no-
body in the worid ever ate raw potato. He declares it must have been
Swedish turnip. All we can say is that we did not judge by the eye
alone, "^e asked the children what raw root they were eating, and
they said "potato." They might however be only gna\ving it.

144 LETTERS FHOM IRELAND.

potatOj for the sake of their rents, which are very much
higher under potato-cropping than they can be under
any other management. While the most enhghtened
friends of the Irish people are hoping to see the pea-
santry weaned from this exclusive diet, and are heard
to say that even the famine may be a benefit if it intro-
duces cereal food as their main dependence, and while
this view is earnestly held and enforced by the farm-
ing and shop-keeping class (who are rate-payers, but
not rent-receivers), the landlords (in great numbers,
we fear) are doing all in their power to foster the pre-
judices of the people, because only under the potato
system can there be the excessive competition for land
which affords them rents like those of times gone by.
It is melancholy, we can assure you, to meditate on
this as we travel along. For years past we have, like
most other people, said '^Ah, it is very sad — this visi-
tation ; but it will bring in a better time than Ireland
has ever known yet. It will compel a vast emigra-
tion, and thus clear the land for improved manage-
ment; it will bring over British settlers to ^ plant ^
the lands which will be deserted. It will break up
the wretched relations between landlord and tenant,
and substitute a system of smaller holdings than the
largest, and larger than the smallest, with a parlia-
mentary title, freedom from incumbrance — freedom,
in short, to begin afresh, with the advantage of mo-
dern knowledge and manageable numbers.'' It was
this view which consoled us during many a day's
journey through an almost unpeopled country, and
through districts where the unroofed cottages out-

IRISH LANDLORDS AND IRISH POTATOES. 145

numbered the occupied. It was this which kept up
our spirits under the stories we have heard in work-
houses, and the sight of crowds of orphans within
and without the walls. And now, after all this, we
find the landlords trying to bring back the old state
of things — the potato diet — the competition for land,
the sub-letting, and all the consequent deterioration
of land and people. We know of one instance in
which a sensible and educated man, who is fond of
farming, if he may do it well, was asked by a pro-
prietor to undertake a certain farm, on the ground of
his inclination to improve. He did so, and improved
the estate by expensive preparations for very superior
tillage. He fenced it thoroughly, and began to drain
and plant. His landlord wanted him to grow pota-
toes largely, which he refused to do, for reasons which
he assigned. At the end of two years, when he was
about to drain a great deal more (encouraged by his
success so far), he asked his landlord, at whose ex-
press request he had undertaken the enterprise, to
give him the security of a lease, or other method of
repayment for his improvements. The landlord re-
fused all security whatever ; and, of course, his tenant
gave up the job. Whatever may be the landlord^'s
difficulties, legal and conventional, in gi\dng such
security, he cannot but be an unpopular man while
such refusals are su^ained by improving tenants ;
and a new cause of discontent is becoming more se-
rious every day.

It has been mentioned before that some British
settlers have become graziers on a great scale, on

H

146 LETTERS FEOM IRELAND.

lands which have sunk to an ahnost nominal value. If
they are unpopular, much more so is the Irish land-
lord who follows the same course on lands w^hich were
under tillage only the other day. Some landlords are
taking fright at the rise of wages consequent on the
departure of multitudes of labourers for America. In
despair of cultivating their land profitably, under a
higher rate of wages, they are throwing their farms
together for grazing purposes, spending their money
in buying cattle instead of paying wages, and employ-
ing, perhaps, on half-a-dozen farms, a couple of herds-
men. They have, of course, a perfect right to do this,
and many of them may have no other course open to
them; but it does not tend to enhance their popula-
rity. They would obtain love and honour by selling
their land to men who have capital wherewith to cul-
tivate, or by letting it to improving tenants, where
now they are cursed by the remaining peasantry, who
see fat cattle on lands where, as they think, half a
hundred men ought to be earning a shilhng or eighteen-
pence a day. Tenants say that landlords' ^^word and
honour '^ are not to be. depended on; and labourers
say that they may go to the workhouse if those who
should be their employers can only make vast profits
by stock farming. And thus there is much landlord-
hating, while the landlord may have many hardships
to bear, on his part, from law and circumstance.

After all, we must come to the conclusion that the
grand practical point is, that the land shall be made
the most of. Wherever the fault of past failures may
lie, this is the thing that must be provided for in the

IRISH LANDLORDS AND IRISH POTATOES. 147

future. Now, in order to do this, one of three things
must happen : — Either the landlord must make im-
provements (repaying himself, of course, for the ex-
pense) ; or the tenant must make them, for which
purpose he must, of course, be securely compensated
for his outlay ; or the landlord's interest must be pur-
chased by the tenant, in which case the tenant becomes
the virtual proprietor. Here are three methods.
There are no others. If the landlord agrees to none
of them, he sets himself up against the great principle
that the land must be made the most of. If he does
so (and it is too cei-tain that a great number of land-
lords decline all the three propositions), it must inevi-
tably follo\^' that the land will pass out of his hands
into those which can render it profitable. It mast be
so, by the immutable natui"al laws under which all
social changes proceed. Meanwhile, he has no right
to wonder at his personal unpopularity, nor to scoff
at any nonsense, nor to defy any sense that is talked
under the heading of " tenant right." At the cry of
the labourer capital will come, and settle down upon
the great man's land, paying him off, and dismissing
him, as he has dismissed others, and taking on his
neighbours, the labourers, in his stead.

It is beheved here that this process would go on
more rapidly but for the disappointment of some Eng-
lish purchasers, who find themselves deceived about
the rental of the estates they have bought. It seems
strange that men of business should buy land on the
faith of any printed valuation, without close investi-
gation. Sometimes three valuations are printed which

H 2

148 LETTEllS FROM IRELAND.

differ so widely as to make English inquirers ask what
the discrepancy can possibly mean. Sometimes it
means that the rental is taken at what it was when
potato-plots were let three times over ; sometimes it
means other things, which it would take too much
space to explain now. The practical matter is that
men who think of purchasing should test the particu-
lars of the rental themselves, if possible, and on the
spot. It would be a pity that the best hope for Ire-
land— that of the settlement of improving capitahsts
— should be impaired by the disappointment of a few
too easy purchasers. There is, we rejoice to say, one
other particular to be now considered by those who
contemplate farming or fisliing in Ireland — the rise
of wages. There can be no doubt whatever that the
people now on the land (throughout the west and
south of Ireland) are insufficient for its thorough
tillage; and new comers must no longer reckon on
getting labourers, in any numbers, for 6J., and we
hope not even for Is., a day. And the people are
still going away in crowds.

"What a pity it is that the Quakers cannot purchase
in the Incumbered Estates Court ! Everybody is sorry;
they would make so admirable a class of purchasers !
But the arrangement about tithes precludes their buy-
ing those estates. Can nothing be done about this ?
It has been very striking to us that the one opinion
in which we have found sensible, benevolent, well-
informed, practical men most earnestly agreeing,
throughout the length and breadtli of the land, is
this — tliat the best hope for Ireland lies in the settle-

IRISH LANDLORDS AXD IRISH POTATOES. 1^9

ment of British capitalists, who shall pay wages in
cash, make no inquiry into any man^s reHgion, do
justly, lead a quiet life, and leave others in peace and
quiet. This is the very description of the Quaker
settlers already here. Must the passage hither through
the Incumbered Estates Court be closed against them
alone ?

150

LETTER XIX.

LANDLORDS, PRIESTS, AND VOTERS.

Septemher 21, 1852.
The western coast of Ireland is very beautiful — most
striking in its wild magnificence. It is full of in-
terest, too, from its noble capabilities, and from the
spectacle of the modes in which the inhabitants keep
themselves alive. But a few days are enough. A few-
days of observation of how the people live, merely by
our going to see them, are sad enough to incline one
to turn away, and never come again. Prom Galway
we have travelled by the unusual route of the coast
of Clare, where tourists being, as we supposed, out
of the question, we hoped to discover how the people
lived. Prom Galway to Ballyvaughan, and thence on
to the borders of Mr. O'Brien's estates, was the most
desolate region perhaps that we have traversed — al-
most as unpeopled as the wilds of Erris, without the
curious charm of its having never been peopled. It
was some relief to find that the unroofing of houses is
not all recent. We were grieving over one mass of
good-looking houses, when our driver told us that was
the memorial of an old landlord quarrel ; that a whole

LANDLORDS, PRIESTS, AND VOTERS. 151

village population — thirty or forty families — all de-
camped in one night, about thirty years ago, in fear
of their landlord. Some good-looking houses on
heights and promontories were deserted at an older
time ; but the dozens and the scores of humble dwell-
ings still have the soot hanging about their gables.
The traveller on the admirable road which winds with
the heights of the coast looks out anxiously to sea for
fishing-boats; but there are none, — only the savage
canoe or curragh is to be seen by good eyes, tossing
near the shores. A woman here and there climbing
barefoot over the rocks in search of bait, or of that
seaweed which people eat to give a taste to their meal
or potatoes ; a boy and girl digging potatoes from out
of the stones of limestone fields, are nearly all the
people that are to be seen at any one place. There
seem to be too few to beg. A very large number of
men are gone to England for the harvest, or to Ame-
rica ; the wives and children are in the workhouses ;
and the roofs then come off their abodes. While on
the part of the coast of Clare which is almost entirely
limestone, we hoped and believed that the excessive
subdivision of the land was owing to its stony cha-
racter. We saw vast heaps in the middle of little
fields ; and we hoped that the innumerable fences were
merely a method of getting rid of the stones. But,
since we have come down upon a more fertile district,
where there no stones in the middle of the fields, we
find the enclosures no larger. Eank and ruinous
hedges or turf-banks occupy a large surface, and di-
vide fields which are mere plots, like the sluggard^s

152 LETTERS PROM IRELAND.

garden. The first revival that we were sensible of was
when the whitewashed dwellings of Mr. O'Brien^s
tenants began to glitter before our eyes. "Corny
O'Brien/' as his neighbours call him, is considered a
kind landlord ; and is not, we were assured, the less
beloved in that capacity for being " an apostate " —
as people here call a Protestant whose parents were Ca-
tholic. The care and expense that Mr. O'Brien has la-
vished on making the Moher cliff's accessible, safe, and
attractive to strangers, have made his name popular
along the coast. The great number of men tiiat we
saw employed in getting in his crops of hay — such a
quantity that we could not conceive how it was all
to be eaten — was an explanation, quite satisfactory, of
the affectionate tone in which we heard him spoken of.
It is true, there is little more doing in his neigh-
bourhood, in the way of permanent employment of
industry, than elsewhere, — no regular scientific farm-
ing, no manufactures, no fisheries ; but there is some-
thing done to attract strangers, and to keep the la-
bouring class from starving. You will wonder at all
this detail. It is not given for nothing, but as intro-
ductory to what we have to say of the affair of Six-mile
Bridge.

You are aware of the exasperation of the priests
about Lord J. Russell's letter to the Bishop of Dur-
ham, and about the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. You
understand how the theological strifes of Ireland, —
and especially of the west, w^here the less-informed
priests are sent, — have been aggravated by the pro-
ceedings and debates in Parliament about Catholic

LANDLORDS, PRIESTS, AND VOTERS. 153

affairs. And you will see in a moment that the
temper of the priesthood is not likely to be improved
by the pressure of the poverty to which they are sub-
jected by the emigration of a multitude of their sup-
porters. The subsistence of the priests is derived
mainly from the poorest and most ignorant class of
their disciples; and there is no doubt of the severe
poverty under which many of them are labouring.
Their political action becomes vigorous in proportion
to their adversity; and you do not need to be told
what it was in the late elections. The Six-mile Bridge
affair is just one of the landlord and priest quarrels
which are taking place all over Ireland ; and when the
trials come on, they will be worth observing, as an
illustration of the politics of the whole island.

Colonel Vandeleur is the proprietor of the greater
part of Kilrush. Kilrush, with all its great corn-
stores, and its quay, and its good streets, and pre-
paration for trade, is in a sadly stagnant condition.
Colonel Yandeleur is not employing labour to such an
extent as to satisfy his neighbours ; but they are taught
to believe that if he was in Parliament the trade of
Kilrush would improve, and all would go well. There
is much contradiction on the spot as to whether the
eighteen voters escorted by the soldiers would, if
voting by ballot, have voted for him or for " Corny
O^'Brien.^' The probability seems to be that they
would, if not interfered with, have voted for Yande-
leur, as a matter of course, " because tenants are al-
ways understood to vote for or with their landlords.''^
One incident seems to show this. These men were

H 3

154 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

"cooped," as we say in England, by "the Liberals"
— some of O^Brien^s party, moved and led by priests ;
and then they were released by some of the Yandeleur
party; whereupon, seeing Colonel Yandeleur, they
cried out, " Oh, master, we knew you would not leave
us prisoners. We knew you would come.^' We think
it may be understood that these eighteen voters volun-
tarily adhered to their landlord against the priests,
though the Liberals (or some of them) insist that they
were coerced by their landlord. Either way, what a
farce is the suffrage in their case !

Eorty-two soldiers were required to escort these
eighteen voters. " And not one too many," we are
told : " you have no idea of the ferocity of an Irish
mob, led by priests, who hope to get rid of the Eccle-
siastical Titles Bill, or to carry any electioneering
point whatever." The party had entered a narrow
lane, fenced by high walls on both sides. The ma-
gistrate, Mr. Delmege, was at the time some way be-
hind, talking with the two officers who were in com-
mand of the soldiers. A mob, among whom three
priests were seen to be busy, gathered on the other
side of the walls, and began to pelt the party with
stones. More and more rushed to the spot, and the
stoning became more dangerous ; and at last tlie
mob collected at both ends of the lane, to hem in
their victims. It is said that not a man of the party
would have escaped alive if the soldiers liad not fired.
The magistrate says he made no request that the sol-
diers might fire. The officers say they gave no orders
to their men to fire. The soldiers say they had no

LANDLORDS, PRIESTS, AND VOTERS. 155

orders to fire, and that it was as citizens that they did
so, in the exercise of their citizen right of self-defence.
How these statements will be supported when the trial
comes on, we shall see. Meantime, eight men, if not
nine, have been killed; and we understand that the
three priests are to be brought to a legal account for
the transaction, as well as the magistrate and the mi-
litary. Colonel Yandeleur lost his election by two
votes only; and people are wondering whether Mr.
O'Brien will keep his seat or lose it^. Xobody has
the least idea (as far as we can gather opinions) that
the wishes of the electors can be judged of, in any
degree whatever, by the state of the poll. This is
the conclusion in which all acquiesce, whatever they
may have to say of Yandeleur or O^Brien — of priest
or landlord — of magistrate or military — of voter or
escort.

From the first word we have heard about election-
eering matters in Ireland, to the last, one thing has
been plain to us, — that if we cannot get the ballot,
we had better give up the absurd and cruel sham of
popular election. There is no need to point out that
the ballot is equally necessary, whether, in any par-
ticular case, the tenants vote according to their own
opinion or against it. That their wishes are argued
about is enough. That they are the subject of con-
flict is enough ; that they are "cooped," and released,
and escorted, is enough. That cry, " Oh, master, we
knew you would not leave us," is worthy of negro
slaves appealing to their owners, rather than of elec-

* The petition against Ms retm-n has been witlidrawn.

156

LETTERS l'EO]\I IHELAND.

tors exercising a riglit of citizenship. It is mourn-
ful enough to compare the actual working with the
ideal of most institutions ; but when we hear how this
Six-mile Bridge affair is talked of in Clare and Kerry,
it seems to us that we have never — except, perhaps*
in the slave States of America, or in the proclama-
tions of Louis Napoleon — heard such a spouting of
farcical tragedy. Let the advocates of the ballot
keep their eye on the trials for this affair, which are
to come on a few months hence. If the evidence
brought forward should be anything like what is com-
municated to us now, it will be the business of all
honest Liberals to repeat it incessantly — to din it into
all ears, till the Irish tenant-voter is either blessed
with the ballot or released from the injurious burden
of the suffrage. There can be no question which
alternative should be insisted on in his behalf.

157

LETTER XX.

THE WORKHOUSES.

Septemler^l, 1852.
Befoee entering an Irish workhouse, the English
visitor is aware that the people to be seen within are
altogether a different class or race from those whom
he has been accustomed to see in workhouses at
home. In England, the pauper population, domes-
ticated in those abodes by legal charity, are, for the
most part, a degraded order of people. The men
and women have either begun life at a disadvantage,
or have failed in life through some incapacity, physi-
cal or moral j or they are the cliildren of such that
we find in workhouses; and we expect therefore to
see a deteriorated generation, — sickly or stupid, or in
some way ill-conditioned. In Irish workhouses it is
not this sort of people that are to be found. Indeed,
the one thing heard about them in England is that
they are ready to die rather than enter the workhouse.
They are the victims of a sudden, sweeping calamity,
which bore no relation to vice, folly, laziness, or
improvidence. In the first season of famine, the in-
mates were a pretty fair specimen of the inhabitants

158

LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

at large ; and they are now the strongest and best-
conditioned of those original inmates. The}^ are now
the people who lived through the famine which carried
off the weak and sickly. The visitor therefore enters
the workhouse gates without that painful mingling of
disgust and compassion in his mind which is one of
the most disagreeable feelings in the world. Prom
afar he sees the great building — solid and handsome,
not at all dull or dreary-looking, but lightsome, with
plenty of window^s, and generally in an airy and
cheerful situation. Again and again have we asked
one another whether, if we had been hungry peasants,
we should have been otherwise than eager to go to
those refuges, where food was known to be certainly
procurable. We can understand the dislike to the
supposed confinement, to the diet, to the cleanliness,
to the total change, in any ordinary times, but we
should have thought that there had been nothing here
that hunger would not have made almost inviting.
We have inquired a good deal into this matter ; and
we have visited several workhouses. With regard to
the well-known fact that many thousands died imme-
diately after admisson, it is asserted by some persons
that a large number had applied days or a week before
they could be admitted ; but it seems more widely true
that admission was at the worst period regarded as a
sentence of death; and that, at all times, there is a
dread of the food in the first place, and of tlic con-
finement and new ways afterwards, so that the request
for admission was delayed till too late.

What we have seen now is nothing like what we

THE AVOllKHOUSES. 159

should have seen in the famine years. The first work-
house we visited was that of Newtown -Limavady,
in Londonderry. In the centre of the estates of the
great Companies is little distress ; and in the harvest
season we saw only groups of children, healthy and
playful, clean and bright ; and women and girls spin-
ning, washing, or cooking ; and infirm old men and
boys, much fewer than the house would hold ; and
benevolent agents going in very often, to see that
they were comfortable. Matters are not so pleasant
everywhere, of course; but still they are a vast im-
provement on what " S. G. 0.^^ and others saw awhile
ago. For instance, we stopped at Ballyvaughan, on
Galway Bay. In the course of our afternoon walk,
we were struck by the situation of a farm-house on
an eminence, with a green field before it, stretching
down to the bay. Entering the field, we saw below
us a number of women wasliing clothes, evidently
from the workhouse. This house was an auxiliary
to the auxiliary house of Ballyvaughan. The preva-
lence of ophthalmia in the house caused this field and
dwelling to be hired for an infirmary. Forthwith we
went to the larger house, an assemblage of whitewashed
buildings, arranged as a workhouse, for the relief of
the overcrowded establishment at Ennistymon.

This Ballyvaughan house was prepared to contain
900 inmates. On the day of our visit — at harvest-
time — at the most prosperous season of the year, and
in a neighbourhood where there is an admirable em-
ployer of labour, the number was no less than 667.
It was inconceivable to us, when we heard this, what

160 LETTEES FROM IRELAND.

the people could have done when there were no houses
nearer than Galway and Ennistjmon. People who
had to come above thirty miles for relief perished for
want of it in great numbers — some at home^ and some
by the roadside. It will not be so again, for there is
to be a proper workhouse built at Ballyvaughan, and
the question of its precise situation is now under de-
bate. A proprietor in the neighbourhood is draining
his lands largely, and with funds borrowed from the
Improvement Commissioners, one of whose stipula-
tions is that the labourers' wages shall be paid in
cash. If we remember rightly, as many as 200 men
are thus employed regularly, and for sufficient pay.
How, then, were there 667 in the workhouse in the
harvest month ? How many were able-bodied men ?
One official said twenty, but on inquiry it turned out
that they were not able-bodied at the moment. Oph-
thalmia, or other ailment or infirmity, had incapaci-
tated these twenty. Of children there were 300.
That was a fact only too easily understood : they were
orphaned by the famine. There were many widows
and " deserted women " the " desertion'' being that
their husbands had gone to England for summer work,
leaving their famihes to the union. The expectation
was that most of these men would come back, with
more or less money. Some would probably go from
Liverpool to America, leaving their families where they
were till they could send funds to carry them out to
the United States. We heard here again of a scandal
which we have since encountered more tlian once.
Some of the guardians have turned out young women.

THE WORKHOUSES. 161

all alone, to shift for themselves. In each case the
clergyman and the great man of the neighbourhood
have rebuked this practice, and put a stop to it : and
it is well ; for there will be an end of the well-grounded
boast of the virtue of the Irish peasant women, if scores
of girls are thus set adrift by their so-called guardians.
In one case the excuse given was, that there was no
particular notice of their being young women, but
that they were included among the able-bodied, and
ordered off with that class. Twenty were thus got
rid of at Ballyvaughan, and thirty at Kilrush, besides
many at other places. We heard with much more sa-
tisfaction of the efforts made to enable young women
to emigrate to Australia. From Kilrush no less than
450 (some of our informants said more) have been
sent across the Atlantic, chiefly to Canada.

On the shores of Malbay, in Clare, stands a little
sea-bathing place, called Milltown, all glittering with
whitewash; and the most glittering part of it is a
large house full of thorough lights, which is described
in the guide-books of a few years ago as a fine hotel,
where sixty beds are made up for visitors. Travellers
had better not go there now in expectation of a bed,
for this house is at present a workhouse — another
auxiliary of Ennistymon — and spoken of with pride
for its healthy situation. Yet, on the way to it we
saw a painful sight — a cart or truck, loaded very
heavily with paupers — chiefly children, with some
women, — the whole being guarded by three of the
constabular}^, carr}dug arms. These were runaways,
we were told, who were being brought from gaol to

162 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

MilltoAvn workhouse. We know nothing of the
merits of the case^ but the spectacle was not a plea-
sant one. If the dread of ophthalmia causes any to
abscond, we do not wonder at it. The story goes,
however, that many put themselves in the way of the
disease, actually try to catch it, to avoid work and
obtain the superior diet ordered for the patients.
The Poor Law Commissioners believe this. AYe saw
the patients at Ennistymon — dozens, scores of them
— lying on clean comfortable beds, in rooms coloured
green, with, green window-curtains, their skins whole-
some-looking, and the hair of the young people bright
and glossy, but all alike suffering under that painful-
looking disease, the consequence of over-crowdings
and other predisposing disadvantages.

The aspect of the other parts of the Ennistymon
house is anything but depressing. The greatest
number receiving relief from its doors at the worst
time was 20,000. The house being built to hold
500, of course the chief part of tliis relief was out-
door, of W'hich there is now none. An incident of
the time which happened here explains something of
the horror with which tlie people regarded the work-
house. In order to prevent the sale of the meal
given in relief it was wetted by order of the guar-
dians. Much of it became as hard as mortar ; and
most of it turned sour and caused illness in the
already enfeebled people. Popular reports of whole-
sale poisonings have often arisen from a less cause.
Now, however, it is found that the meal and other
food agree well with the inmates, whose average of

THE WORKHOUSES. 163

health is high, exclusive of the prevalent ophthalmia.
The resident officers spoke cheerfully of the change
since last year. During the fever season last year
there were deaths daily to the amount of from twenty
to twenty-five in that crowded house, whereas there
are now only about three in a week. The breakfast
is porridge with milk; and the dinner, soup made
of meal, mth various vegetables; and an allowance
of bread, which suffices also for supper. The peo-
ple are hoping now to be allowed potatoes twice a
week ; and great is the pleasure with which they look
forward to this treat. There is no regular agricul-
tural instructor of the boys at Ennistymon, .but some
are promising weavers, under the teaching of a zealous
Yorkshireman. The women spin and knit, and the
sewing of the household is done by the girls, who are
also taught fine work, by w^hich they may make money
hereafter.

Long before we entered any Irish workhouse Mr.
Osborne^s name was uttered to us with blessings, as
we find it still wherever we go. There are no two
opinions about him, and the blessedness of his visit —
as far as we have heard. Gentle and simple, CathoHc
and Protestant, Tory and Liberal, bid us beHeve all
that he has said — assure us that his information was
precisely correct — declare that he is the best of all
the good friends of L-eland — and glow while they tell
us that what he said was (in the words of a poor Ca-
tholic) *■' religion, and charity, and truth, all in one.'"'
We had not doubted this before ; but this universal
testimony strengthened our desu-e to see the Kilrush

164 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

house. We there heard^ from resident officials, ter-
rible accounts of the famine and fever times, when
people were brought in, and died between the outer
gate and the door of the house ; when they were laid
three in a bed (those beds which are comfortable and
decent for one, but which still are made to hold two),
and the dead and the living were found lying side by
side every morning. But enough has been said about
that. There have been auxiliary houses opened to
a greater extent than are now needed. Three have
been lately closed. The house was built to contain
1100, and the sheds 416 more. The number in the
house when we were there was 2735, and the deaths
during the last twelve months have been 362. There
is a farm of twenty-five acres, w^here the boys are
taught to labDur. It was Sunday when we were
there ; and we neither saw the people at work, nor
met the master and matron. Colonel Yandeleur and
a party of friends were there. After they were gone
we went round. We thought the place very clean,
and the people, on the whole, healthy-looking; but
our impressions of the management, in the hands of
subordinate officers (who seemed to us too young),
were not very favourable. There was much confusion
and inaccuracy in their statements ; and the terms
they were on with the people, and the manners of the
household, did not seem to us so good as we had ex-
pected from what we had seen elsewhere. There can
be no doubt, however, of the improvement which has
been fairly instituted in the Kilrush house, and which
is still advancing.

I

THE WORKHOUSES. 165

Here and there we meet with some one who wishes
to see workhouses made seK-supporting. Such per-
sons seldom see any alternative between paupers being
absolutely idle and supporting the house by field-
labour. There is no need to tell you what we say
when our opinion is desired — how we ask whether
any industrial enterprise ever answers under corporate
management; whether there are not, in the case of
pauper labourers, peculiar disadvantages ; and whe-
ther the whole principle of a legal charity for the
helpless is not abandoned when the proposition is
made to maintain them by the labour of the able-
bodied. Of this we may have occasion to say more,
if the subject should again be pressed upon our notice
as it has been. Meantime, we have only to say now
that we cannot conceive what would have become of
the people without the workhouses ; and that we can-
not conceive what is to become of the workhouses
unless some productive industry — farming, fishing, or
manufactures — is ere long estabhshed in the west of
Ireland.

166

LETTER XXI.

KILLARNEY.

September 23, 1852.
No one who has seen the KiHarney lakes can wonder
that visitors bring away no very precise accounts of
the condition of the inhabitants of the district. We
hear a good deal about the swarms of beggars, guides,
boatmen, and curiosity-sellers, because they have hi-
therto been a part of the scenery ; but the charms of
the scenery are so transcendent, and the visits of tra-
vellers are so short, that there is no room for wonder
or reproach if we hear less of the people of Kerry,
who yet see the greatest number of EngHsli, than of
the rest of the Irish nation. Henceforward, less and
less will be heard of the beggars and other persecu-
tors of the traveller ; for the nuisance has been found
so intolerable, that the magistrates and gentry of the
neighbourhood have taken vigorous measures to put a
stop to it. For our part we have found it nothing
worth complaining of, — nothing to compare with the
importunity of the car-pursuers of Connaught. A few
women with pitchers of goats' milk and bottles of
potheen on the hill-sides ; a few vendors of curiosities

KILLAKNEY. 167

and arbutus wares ; a few boys pretending to assist,
when you want nothing but to be let alone : these are
all, under the prodigious temptations of the place and
season.

We are told that a million of money now enters
Ireland annually, in the shape of tourists ; and of these
nearly all, of course, come to Killarney. "We will not
say what the profits of the hotel-keepers are said on
the spot to amount to this season ; because we cannot
be sure that such reports are correct, and we have no
means of verifying them. It is enough to say that
each innkeeper is supposed to be making several thou-
sand pounds between May and October. We have
observed with pain, throughout the greatest part of
the country, that there seems little for the Irish to
depend on but the influx of visitors ; the most preca-
rious and demoraHzing of all resources for subsistence.
At this place, where the very springtide of this kind
of resource is met with, we have looked about us to
see what is the aspect of life, and what seem to be the
prospects of the inliabitants.

The neat, trim, finished appearance of the ap-
proaches to Killarney is so striking to the traveller as
to be known to all the world. Lawns that are mown,
plantations that are fenced, walls that are not dilapi-
dated, avenues of old trees, paths that are not grass-
grown, are a treat to the eye. There are also turnip-
fields that show at once what they are, instead of
putting on all sorts of gay disguises of weeds. Of
course, hands are required to do all this work. We
find that Lord Kenmare and Mr. Herbert — the two

168 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

great proprietors on the margins of the Lakes — em-
ploy many labourers, and pay them somewhat higher
wages than we have been accustomed to hear of in
Ireland. Then there are the boatmen and guides.
These men make money only from June till the mid-
dle of October. During the rest of the year they do
not know what to do with themselves. Some make
scanty and fitful earnings by fishing ; but they utter
mournful complaints of the neglect and helplessness
under which they suffer during the winter, after hav-
ing been made profit of during the summer. The
boatmen^s story — calmly and gravely told — is, that
the innkeepers, who assume the whole business of
employing and paying them, allow them only 1*. 6 J. for
a day's work in the height of the season — short as that
season is — and give them no aid or countenance what-
ever during the rest of the year. If this is the case,
and the whole of it, the evil will soon be remedied.
The opening of the railroad before next year will enor-
mously increase the number of visitors to the Lakes ;
and the boat monopoly will no doubt be broken up
and the men enabled to improve their earnings.

Seeing a great number of Kerry cattle on the hills,
we inquired into the destination of the produce, and
we found, as we expected, that a large quantity of
butter goes to Cork for exportation. Here, again, w'e
find the producers, for the most part, in a state of
undue subservience to the merchant. The Cork but-
ter-merchants come their rounds once or twice a year ;
and the needy dairy farmers bind themselves by a six
months' contract to the price named by the merchant.

KILLARNEY. 1C9

Those who have capital hold themselves independent,
aud profit accordingly. One farm that we have seen
to-day consists of forty acres, twenty of which are un-
der tillage, eighteen or so in grass, and the rest bog,
or required for the yards aud bit of garden. Some
wheat is grown, and, with the oats, sold, while Indian
meal is bought for family use. A few Swedes and
some mangold-wurzel are grown for the cattle. There
are ten cows, which yield a firkin, or half a cwt. of
butter (value two guineas and a half) per Aveek, for
about half the year, and less for the other half. Much
sour milk is sold in the town ; and there are other ad-
vantages— such as plenty of food for pigs — wood out
of the bog, turf, etc. The Cork market for butter and
for pigs is an advantage to all Kerry and a good part
of Limerick ; and might be much more so, with good
management, and a better investment of the capital
which is certainly now flowing freely into the country.
Of the bog-oak carving everybody has heard; but
comparatively few know how vast is the quantity of
wood exhumed from the Kerry bogs, and how great is
its value. It has undergone a preparation which fits it
for almost interminable wear ; and it is imperious to
insects. The manufacture of churns, milk " keelers,"'
bowls, aud even bedsteads for local use, is such as
might be a broad hint to sensible men to make some-
thing more of such a resource. T\'hilst the finest
black specimens are reserved for carving and knick-
knacks, the rest might furnish a good industrial re-
source in the hands of an enterprising man. If the
little Kerry cows are found grazing on the Xotting-

1

170

LETTEES FRO^r IRELAND.

ham meadows, and speckling the hill-sides of York-
shire, Kerry churns, of a singular and indestructible
wood, would find no difficulty in getting there if their
value was understood.

Amidst these resources, what is the aspect of Kil-
larney, apart from the lakes and their adjuncts, to the
stranger? There is the grand Catholic cathedral, be-
gun by poor Pugin, and little likely to have been
finished by him, if he had been alive and well. It is
a melancholy sight, that half-developed edifice, stand-
ing on the bright sward, unused and unusable. It
has cost from £9000 to £13,000, (there is no
making out anything nearer than this,) and it would
require, some say £6000, some say £10,000, to finish
it ; and nobody sees where the money is to come from.
Another great building is the workhouse, now, by the
addition of wings after the famine, become indeed a
very large building. It is one of the best managed
houses in Ireland, strangely and mournfully populous,
considering the aspect and resources of the neigh-
bourhood ; but, on the whole, one of the most satis-
factory establishments of its class. The population
of Killarney was somewhat under 10,000 before the
famine. It is now under 7000; yet, thinned by
death and emigration, it stiU yields a large workhouse
population in the season when the harvest is gathered
in from the fields, and opulent strangers are swarming
on the lakes.

There is another prodigious edifice, more imposing
still. We could not credit the information when told
that it was a lunatic asylum. Looking from it to

KILLARNEY. 171

the styes in the outskirts of the town, where human
faraihes are huddled hke swine, we could not but
feel that to build such an establishment in such a
place was hke giving a splendid waistcoat to a man
without a sliirt. That pile of building a lunatic asy-
lum ! But for what lunatics — and how many ? For
the pauper lunatics of the county of Kerry only. It
seemed to us an Irish bull of a melancholy sort; and
especially when we heard that there is another asylum
at Limerick, and another at Clonmel, and another at
Cork ; but we found that the affair is English altoge-
ther,— a parliamentary enterprise, at which the Irish
are as much surprised as anybody. ^Ve went over the
building, which is nearly ready for occupation, and
will be open for the reception of patients in two or
three weeks. As we looked along its vast corridors,
and our footsteps echoed under its vaulted roofs, it
seemed to us like some of those grand old monaste-
ries on the Danube or the Guadalquivir, which it
makes one feel youthful and romantic to read of; anci
it is built to accommodate, in this land of hunger
and rags, two hundred pauper lunatics ! There are
at present eighty Kerry patients at Limerick, and
eighteen elsewhere. Let us hope that these are
enough — ^reduced as the population of Kerry now is.
It is incredible that the place can be half-filled by
the people for whom it is built ; yet there is nothing
said, as yet, about appropriating any portion of it to
the use of paying patients. It seems as if this must
follow — so great as would be the advantage to such
patients of a position expressly adapted to their needs,

I 2

172 LETTERS FllOM IRELAND.

— and so important as it is^ in the present state of
Ireland, that institutions of this kind should support
themselves, when the opportunity is fairly offered.

It should be added that this enterprise was ordered
and begun before the famine. The report to Parlia-
ment, which lies before us, on lunatic asylums in Ire-
land, which contains the beginning of its history, bears
the date of 1845. A committee of the Lords (of 1843)
had before reported on the neglect of the lunatic poor
of Ireland, for whom no other refuge was provided
than the gaols and a few cells in houses of industry.
It is perfectly right that what the Irish legislatures
had neglected should be done by us; but there is
surely some medium between shutting up persons with
diseased brains in gaol-cells and building palaces, and
providing a rich dietary for them, before the very eyes
of their houseless and hungering neighbours. The
state of brain produced by fasting is a real and true
insanity. By this process the building miglit too
easily be filled. Otherwdse, we must hope, it never
will. If a stranger w^as told that such a building as
that w^as filled from Kerry alone, he must needs think
that the Kerry people answered to poor Swift^s account
of the human race in general.

The interior arrangements of this institution are,
on the whole, excellent, — not, perhaps, quite up to the
mark of recent improvement elsewhere, but opening to
the poor innocent prisoner of the gaol- cell and inap-
propriate infirmary a prospect of space, air, activity,
and comfort, which it is pleasant to think of.

173

LETTER XXII.

THE RIVAL CHURCHES.

September 26, 1852.
As we have come down to the south, from Mayo and
Galway, we have heard less and less about the Pro-
testant conversions which make such a noise there.
We find the Catholics and Protestants on better
terms : but the comfort of this observation is spoiled
by the reflection which accompanies it — that the Pro-
testant Church has no business here as an establish-
ment. The peace and quiet, wherever they are found,
are solely owing to the number of Protestants being too
small to make any stir. Wherever we go — whether
we find the clergy of the two Churches in a state of
deadly mutual hatred, or letting one another alone —
we are driven back upon our old conclusion, that
wherever the Church of England is more or less a
missionary church in Ireland, there we find society
torn to pieces with quarrels ; and that, where there is
tranquillity, she is not discharging the function of a
missionary church, and has no right to her estabhsh-
ment over the heads of the majority, whom she as-
sumes to be converting.

174

LErrEKS FROM IllELAND.

We have passed a church, here and there, with a
little parsonage standing near it ; the church new and
spruce-looking, if not handsome; the parsonage per-
haps a good white house, with a porch, and hydrangeas
and fuchsias adorning the front; perhaps a mere barn-
like cottage, with mud hovels standing directly before
the windows. In any case, the answer to our ques-
tion— how many worshipers attend the church? — is
nearly the same : — " four or five families )^ — '^ a score
or two of persons, according to the season/' In one
place, where the parsonage is a good house, the boast
of the Protestants is that a hundred people attend the
church. If we inquire about the income of the cler-
gyman, we hear of £300 a year in one place; £800
in another ; in a third, that the income, which was
£1500, is now reduced to £400. In this last case it
was that our Catholic informant (a great admirer of
the clergyman) told us of a guest of his from Eng-
land who went with him to his chapel, and found it
full of people on their knees, as full as it could hold ;
and how he, in return, went to the Protestant church
— a handsome church — with his guest ; and how the
guest was surprised to find only four or five persons
there. It is as well to hear both sides about such
matters ; and we therefore were glad to obtain a Pro-
testant account of the number of attendants at that
same church. The Protestant account is that there
are between twenty and thirty in the whole. "What
can the Catholics think of an income of £400 (after
the reduction) for the care of under thirty souls, — and
at a time when their priests are becoming desperate

THE EIVAL CHURCHES. 175

from poverty ? It was in that neighbourhood that a
Protestant clergyman, with high preferment, but no-
thing that could be called a flock, received an afiecting
testimonv of the attachment of his Catholic neii'h-
hours, who respect his character, and love him for
his charity and Hberality. A tenant of his wanted
to abscond without paying rent, and chose Sunday
for the feat, thinking himself secure of not being ob-
served or pursued on that day. He got together on
Saturday afternoon everything that he could make
away with, and on Sunday morning he was off. Some
suspicion had got abroad among the peasantry, and he
was followed and brought back, with all his gear, and
delivered up to his clerical landlord. This is all very
well as a transaction between Catholic and Protestant
neighbours ; but it fills us with shame — only hearers
of the anecdote as we are — that tlie good landlord
should be receiving a large income as a clerical sine-
curist, wliile the clergy of his grateful neighbours are
sinking so low in poverty, from the depopulation of
their districts, as to be showing more and more of the
ferocity of hardship. There are some residents — some
of both Churches — who have said to us that it would
be a good thing if the Government would repeat the
offer to pay the priests. If it was done prudently,
and with some regard to their feehngs, it is beUeved
that they would gladly enough receive it now. There
was a time when we, not having seen so much of Ire-
land as we have now, were in favour of such a provi-
sion for the Catholic priesthood. Our present im-
pression (subject to change, if the existing crisis

176 LETTF,RS FROM IRELAND.

should develop e new features in the case) is that it
would be a pity to spoil the process of testing the
priests which is now going on. There is no doubt that
the most mercenary of them are undergoing detection,
by means of the distress of their flocks at home,, and
the opening of the eyes of such of them as have gone
abroad; while the same circumstances are sure to
bring out, in full brightness, the disinterestedness of
such of them as are worthy of their professions. The
really devoted will be supported while their flocks have
anything to eat themselves. The rest — we fear we
must say the large majority — will become known by
their felt rapacity and hardness much better than by
any denunciations and canvassings by Protestant ri-
vals. Glad as we should be to see the few apostolic
priests placed at ease, we should be sorry to see the
process of the probation of the whole stopped short
in the middle. As the fleece is dropping off in tatters,
and the wolfs hide is showing itself from within, we
would not, if we could, patch up the rents, and so
help to beguile again tlie suspicious flock. However,
there is no hurry about this — no present need to
argue it — for nobody supposes that the present Govern-
ment will endow any Church but its own.

Our attention was long ago directed upon one mat-
ter which it is painful to think and speak about, but
which it would be wrong to pass over in inquiring
into the state of the Churches. It is easily conceiv-
able that a Protestant clergyman in Ireland must find
himself very unhappy in the position in which he is
most likely to find himself. He comes over, pro-

THE RIVAL CHURCHES. 177

bablv:, iu a good spirit — devoted to a difficult duty —
hoping to bring converts into his Church — longing to
rescue the poor and ignorant from superstition, and
to redeem them for this life and the next. He pre-
sently finds all this out of the question. There is no
converting ignorant Catholics but by setting up in
fierce opposition to the priests — but by setting up
counter threats and promises ; and in such a game —
without bribery by food and work — the priest is sure
to have the best of it. The gentle and peace-loving
clergyman cannot enter upon, or sustain, such a war-
fare as this. He sinks into silence, except at certain
hours on Sundays; and then, how should he speak
with any earnestness, when he has scarcely a hearer
beyond his own household ? He finds little or no-
thing to do in return for the income he enjoys. He
is taunted with the enjoyment of that income, or he
suspects that he is. He meets vdth. no sympathy,
intellectual or rehgious. He lives in an atmosphere
of storm or stagnation. Either every man's hand is
against him, or no one regards him. Under such in-
fluences, w'ho can wonder if his nature faints ? Some
men may, in such a position, be humble enough to
bear the humiliation. Some may be heroic enough
to stand unmoved, — a mark for obloquy and insult.
Some may sincerely believe that they earn their main-
tenance as churchmen by their good deeds as citizens
outside their empty churches. But there is a large
number besides, who are but common men, and can-
not hold so anomalous a position ; and of these, too
many fall into bad habits. Some are merely selfish,

i3

178 LETTERS PROM IRELAND.

surrouTicliDg themselves with pet animals,, or sporting,
or dozing away their lives in mere laziness ; but others
drink. There is no need to describe the process of
decline, or the painful spectacle which here and there
meets the eye of the traveller, on the road or by the
way-side inn. The sin and the fate are the same
wherever seen. When we have mentioned this to
Protestants — in order to inquire — the answer has been,
repeatedly, an admission of the occasional fact, with
the addition, " But the priests do so too."'' Some do.
There are instances in both Churches, no doubt ; and
the priests have the disadvantage of comparative igno-
rance and depressing poverty. It is not our business
(nor anybody's either) to make out how much drunk-
enness there is in either Chnrch, in comparison with
the other; but to point to the sad significance of its
existence in the case of clergymen without flocks. If
the sin and shame have arisen out of their false posi-
tion, let the blame visit theni lightly. If we had our
wish, we would decline to waste time and energy in
blaming anybody, but abolish the false position alto-
gether.

The operation of the National Schools will be found,
in the course of another generation, to be a curious
one. Wherever we go we find them attended almost
entirely by Catholics, not only because of the paucity
of Protestant children, but on account of the enmity
of the Protestant clergy. Yet it is impossible for the
Catholic priesthood to benefit by them. No boy
would be received in college, to prepare for the priest-
hood, who had been educated in a National school.

THE RIVAL CHURCHES. 170

We watched the other day the countenance of an in-
telligent little lad of ten years old, destined for the
priesthood, whose father was talking to us in perfect
good faith of the O^Donohue^s seven-yearly appear-
ance on the Killarney lakes, and the other legends of
which that giant is the hero. The boy, brought up
in this kind of faith, cannot go to the National school,
though his father would like to send him, because it
would be fatal to his prospect of the priesthood ; and
his sisters are sent to the nunnery school. At an-
other place, meantime, the two schools are the Na-
tional and a Protestant one. The parents in the
neighbourhood would hke to send their children to
the Protestant school, because the teaching there is
of a high order ; but the priests compel them rather
to fall back upon the National school, which is not
well managed — or thought not to be so. It is clear,
on the whole, that the clergy of both Churches, as a
body, hold themselves, and would fain hold their peo-
ple, aloof from the National school. If another gene-
ration finds that both clergies have sunk into power-
lessness under the unavoidable operation of these
schools, who but the clergy wiU be answerable for
their fate ?

The religion and morals taught at nunnery schools
are rather remarkable — as far as we can learn.
TTe were visiting one lately, when we saw and
heard some curious things. A page in a copy-book
(not an exercise-book, but a copy-book) gave a sum-
mary of evidences and precepts in favour of ^'the
unblody {sic) sacrifice of the mass,'^ from the Old and
New Testaments,, which showed that the pupils were

180 LETTEUS FROM IRELAND.

supposed to know notliing of either Testament. In
the fruitful garden was a fierce dog, formidable, even
when chained up, to all but the sisters. Sister A.
explained that the dog was placed there to protect
the vegetables from being stolen "by the parents/'
said she, "of the children we are supporting." She
went on to say that though " it would not do to say
so to the people themselves," there was no sin in
such theft, because the people were hungering, and,
added she, "God himself put these things in their
reach ; so there is no sin in eating them on the spot,
though there would be in carrying them away. But
of course it would not do to tell them so." We
longed to ask why the nuns put a dog there to keep
the people from touching what God put in their
way ; but the question might have been too puzzling.
Again, the little burial-ground was quite filled with
the half-dozen graves ; and the simple question was
asked, whether it was to be enlarged ? The eager
reply was, when it was wanted, and not before.
" Why anticipate death ? Evil comes soon enough :
why anticipate it?" This way of talking might have
been adopted as suitable to world's people, but it is
not very like the ordinary notion of convent ^dews of
life and death. We should like to know how the
children in the school are taught to regard death.
In the case both of nuns and children, the more they
are led to dread death, the greater is their dependence
on the priest, whose offices alone can bear them safely
through it : and this may account for the difference
between the nuns' and what is commonly called the
Christian view of death.

181

LETTEE XXIII.

FROM KILLARNEY TO VALEXTIA— DIXGLE BAY—
CAHIRCIVEEX.

Sej-deinher 28, 1852.
There is hardly a more iiiteresting da/s journey in
all Ireland than that from Killarney to Yalentia — the
most westerly port in Europe, and the station from
which the O^Connell estates may be overlooked. By
the way, we omitted to mention, in speaking of the
unfinished cathedral at Killarney, that, close by, a
large monastery is rising from the ground. In answer
to our observation that the money which is building
the raoTiastery (the '^ monkery,"*^ as the inhabitants
call it) would have finished the noble cathedral, our
Catholic companion observed that the monks cared
most for their own affair, and had no thought of let-
ting the money be spent on any other object. The
boarded windows and truncated tower of that church
were a melancholy spectacle, as we left Killarney, — so
little hope as any one seems to have that poor Pugin^s
design will ever be wrought out. For several miles
the road lies in that tract of country which appears to
be enclosed between Macgillicuddy's Eeeks (the lof-
tiest mountains near KiUamev) and the Dins^le moun-

182 LETTERS FIIOM IRELAND.

tains — Dingle Bay being yet unseen. At length
marks of improvement occur, which at once arrest the
traveller's attention. The pastures are really and truly
green : the hay is not half rushes ; the oats are well
stacked, and the stacks near the farmsteads are plen-
tiful. There is a little barley, too. There are or-
chards, with apple-trees bending with fruit. The bye-
roads are in tolerable order. Up the skirts of the
hills, and over a considerable extent of the bog, there
are inclosures which prove that a vigorous and sus-
tained reclamation has taken place. The chief draw-
back is that the children are all but naked, and very
impish-looking in their filth, with their hair on end,
and no clothing whatever but a rag of blanket round
their bodies. On inquiry, we find that this improved
region is the property of Lady Headly, — the same lady
who has built a church at Killarney, and pays a curate
£200 a year. She is called a generous employer;
and the reclamations are beheved to answer extremely
well. The people on her estate are said not to be poor
at all,— nothing that can be called poor, — as they are
paid such good wages — five shilHngs a week. We
asked how it was that the children were so naked;
and the answer was one which showed that clothes are
not here thought, in the case of children, a necessary
of life at all. After the treat of seeing this improved
tract, came that of emerging from the valley, and
winding round the base of the Drung mountain, above
the glorious expanse of Dingle Bay, — here seven miles
across at its narrowest part. We were swept along one
of Nimmo's noble roads, with our feet overhanging the

DINGLE BAY. 183

fence of two feet high, and a heathery precipice plung-
ing down 200 feet into the blue sea below, — at such a
depth that the gulls and curlews are like white specks
floating in mid-air. Ximmo evidently carried the true
artist spirit into his profession. It is impossible to
travel along the western coasts of Ireland, as we have
done, without feeling towards him as towards a great
artist, watching the manifestations of his creative
faculty, and sympathizing in the boldness, the skill,
and the grace of his works as in the beauties of the
sculpture, the painting, or the architecture of masters
of another kind of art. Every traveller who knows
this road vaunts its beauty; and some have said that
the scenery is equal to any on the coast of Italy. It
is not so; but it is wonderfully beautiful, in such
weather as we have now. But in all that expanse, so
many miles in breadth, and stretching away as far as
the eye could follow, — even from that height there
"was not visible a vessel of any kind whatever. The
blue waters lay absolutely unbroken, but by the dip
of the sea-bird. Xo comment can strengthen the im-
pression of such a fact.

The road retires at length into a valley, where the
moorland becomes wilder with every mile. The tiirf,
where cut, is of great thickness. There is no drain-
age, and scarcely any attempt at cultivation. A few
patches of wet potato-ground, and weedy and scanty
oats, occur ; but, for long distances, there is nothing
to disturb the crane at his pool, or the hawk, hovering
aloft, with his eye on the young kids perhaps, which
look very white, as they repose themselves on a peat-

184 LETTEllS FllOM IRELAND.

bank ; or on his proper prey, the chicks and ducklings
which appear here and there, as if it were spring.
Where there are kids, there is probably prey for the
hawk and eagle near. The interest now is, that we are
entering upon O'Connell's property — approaching
Cahirciveen. Among 8ome green fields and plantations
stands a neat abode : it is the dwelling of his agent.
On the other hand, on the brink of the inlet below,
stand the ruins of a country house, the roof and windows
gone, and the chimney and gable grown over with ivy.
This is the house in which O'Connell was born. At
every step one becomes more able to sympathize with
his love of his Kerry mountains, with their long
stretches of heather, peopled with moorfowl and four-
footed game, and separated by noble bays and lovely
inlets, where an evening sail must be a charming con-
trast with the nights spent in the House of Commons.
We grow milder about his personal extravagance —
more genial about liis sports with his beagles, and his
open house — more sympathizing, till — we enter Cahir-
civeen. After that, all is over ; and we return to our
deliberate estimate of his character.

We need not describe that place. It has been done
by the Times' Commissioner in such a way that no one
who cares about the matter at all can have forgotten
it. There is little to add, after the lapse of six years.
Mr. O^ConnelFs receipt of hundreds of thousands of
pounds from the Irish people seems not to have done
any good to his tenantry at Cahirciveen. The greater
part of that property he rented from Trinity College,
DubUn, and sublet to tenants, from whom lie received

CA.HIRCIVEEN. 185

a larjje income. The existing embarrassments are
known to be very great^ notwithstanding the efforts
which have been made by the Catholic bishops to
clear them away. And there seems to be no feeling
left about the man who was so idolized so very short
a time ago ! A few years since the traveller heard of
him at every step — never by his own name, but by
the title of " the Liberator '■' — uttered as if it were a
sacred name. Now, it is evidently understood that
he never did aiiything, nor ever could have done any-
thing, to justify the promises by which he gained the
people's confidence, and the wealth which they yielded
him oat of their want. '''The people liked to be
under him,'' we are told, and he never wanted tenants.
Perhaps he should not be severely blamed for the fatal
over-peoplijig of his estates, wliich — a prevalent evil
everywhere — was aggravated in this case by the affec-
tion, the pride, and the vanity which urged the com-
petition to live under the Liberator. Bat the penalty
remained when the feeling was gone. When the news
of his death arrived, there was grief " for three or four
days," and then he seemed to be forgotten. He is
seldom or never heard of now : his portrait (a good
painting, we are told) was lately sold for two shillings.
His sons are thought not to inherit his ability, and
they excite no interest. The remarks of the Times'
Commissioner are found to have been very true, and
to have done great good — first, by causing a grand
cleaning and mending all tlu'ough Cahirciveen, and
afterwards by opening a good many eyes to the great
man's personal extravagance and forfeiture of liis pro-

186 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

mises; and the people should not be taxed with in-
gratitude if these are tlie things that are heard of now.
Ever since we entered the country, our impression has
been growing stronger, that the people are not now
in the habit of attributing their woes to political in-
juries : and in this centre of O'ConnelFs influence,
where, ten years ago, every man was his worshiper
and his slave, it certainly appears now as if politics
occupied no part of the people's thoughts. During
the famine 2200 of the 3000 inhabitants of the
island of Valentia received relief at the soup-house ;
and a very large number has since emigrated from the
whole country round. They know very well that
O'ConnelFs promises were of no value against such
visitations as they have suffered under, and they are
thinking of getting food, and not of a separation from
England. Whatever the priests in Acliill and else-
where may say, the people do look to the English for
their redemption in this world, knowing that rom the
English alone has any effectual aid been derived. The
aspirations, desires, prayers (whatever you may call
such earnest wishes), that we have met with, are two,
from all sorts of people — that they could emigrate, and
that the English would come and settle and pay gooil
wages. Of Eepeal we have not heard one word, nor
of any political agitation whatever, but that which re-
lates to the great ecclesiastical quarrel of the day.

The most implacable enemy of OT'onnell could not
but be touched and softened by a visit to Derrynane
Abbey at this day. There can hardly be a more affect-
ing spectacle than that house, where so much of the

CAHIUCIVEEN. 187

politics of our century has been conceived and dis-
cussed. The situation of that old seat of the O'Con-
nells is finer than description can give an idea of.
Seen from above, in its green cove, embosomed in
woods, guarded by mountains, whose grey rocks are
gaudy with gorse and heather, and facing a sea sprin-
kled with islets, it looks like a paradisiacal retreat.
The first glimpse of it from the Cahirciveen road (the
road by which O'Connell passed from one mass of his
large property to another) shows his yacht riding in a
sound in front of his grounds ; and that sea-view
sue'S'ests the remembrance of the old davs when the
O^Connells of both families — Dan^s uncles and father
— were understood to do as others did who lived in
situations so favourable for those commercial enter-
prises which are conducted by night. In the wild
times of the last century, when defiance of law was
rather a virtue than otherwise, and communication
with France was an Irish privilege, gentlemen who
had houses among the bays and sounds of the west
coast were under every inducement to make their for-
tunes by smuggling. The wild ruin of the house
where Daniel was born stands in an admirable situa-
tion for smuggling ; and so does the Abbey ; and the
legend runs, that the facility was abundantly used.
Smuggling is quite over now, as the coast-guard tell
with a sigh. And Agitation is over too. So the one
house stands a ruin, and the other is rotting away, in
damp and neglect. It is inhabited ; it is even filled
with company at times ; — it is to be so to-morrov;.
But not the less forlorn is its appearance, when seen

188 LETTEPtS FROM IllELA^'D.

from a nearer point than the mountain roads, choked
bj its own woods, which grow almost up to the win-
dows, stained with damp, out of joint/unrepaired, un-
renewed,— it is a truly melancholy spectacle. Melan-
choly to all eyes, it is most so to the minds of those
who can go back a quarter of a century, and hear
again the shouts which hailed the advent of the
Liberator, and see again the reverent enthusiasm
which watched him from afar when he rested at Der-
rynane from his toils, and went forth to hunt among
his hills, or cruise about his bays. Now, there is his
empty yacht in the sound, and his chair in the chapel
covered with black cloth. All else that he enjoyed
there, in his vast wealth of money, fame, and po-
pular love, seems to be dropping away to destruction.
When we were there, the bay, whose full waters must
give Kfe and music to the whole scene, was a forlorn
stretch of impassable sand — neither land nor water.
The tide was out. It was too like the destiny of him
whom it neighboured so nearly. His glory swelled
high ; and grand at one time was its dash and roar :
but the tide is out. And it can never return — could
never have returned, if he had lived; for there is
going on, we trust, a gradual upheaving of the land,
giving some promise of that reclamation which he
never would allow.

189

LETTER XXIY.

VALENTIA.

Septemler 29, 1852.
There are various reasons why Yaleutia is interesting.
Its Spanish name catches the ear, and reminds one of
the Spanish legends ^hich exist all down the coast
from Gahvay hither; and of the wrecking of two
vessels of the Armada in Malbay ; and of the frieudlv
intercourse which existed here between the con-
tinental pirates and the Irish^ in the time of war, in
consequence of the representations of a Catholic
bishop that the value of all depredations was levied
on the Catholics by the English. Yalentia is interest-
ing from its position — so favourable to smuggling,
invasion, and other sea tricks (from its enabling such
tricksters to slip out on one side while their pursuers
came in at the other), that Cromwell erected forts at
both its north and south entrances. It is interestincr

o

as overlooking O^ConnelFs town of Cahirciveen, yet
being never visited by him. It is interesting as being
a sort of little kincrdom of the Ivnic^hts of Kerrv — the
Eitz2:eralds — who would not exchans^e that old title
of Knight of Kerrv for anv that the Queen could

190 LETTERS mOM IRELAND.

bestow. It is interesting as being one of the places
named for a packet-station — its port being the western-
most in Europe ; and " the next parish/^ for which
an official gentleman was one day inquiring, being in
America. A packet-station however it is not to be.
Passing over other causes of interest^ we come to that
which is, at the present moment, of the deepest signi-
ficance in our eyes. Yalentia affords the broadest
hints of any place we have visited of the importance
of the settlement of the English in Ireland. And the
present moment is the time tu point this out, as the
island is in the Incumbered Estates Court, and is to
be sold (the inhabitants believe) in October.

The island is five miles long, by two and a half
broad. Of its noble scenery, this is not the place to
speak. Before the famine, its population was 3000.
Now, in spite of the highly favourable circumstances
we shall speak of, the population is only 2500. The
Knight of Kerry has a house there, in a fine situation,
with some woods about it, and a capital dairy of Kerry
cows. A good deal of butter is made for exportation,
and the cattle, a small and pretty breed, are an orna-
ment to the hills and fields. The cabins of the rural
population are wretched. The thatched roofs are
rounded, and have no eaves ; and the dwellings are
usually set down one before another ; so that a hamlet
has the appearance, from a little distance, that we no-
ticed in the fishijig villages in Achill, of a cluster of
Hottentot kraals. In our eyes they are less respect-
able than Indian wigwams, because of their darkness,
and the infamous filth sm-rounding them, in the hoi-

VALENTIA. 191

lows in wliich thej are sunk. The squaws in Wis-
consin throw skins and fish-bones about; but their
wigwams are pitched on dry sand or the wholesome
grass of the prairie, and are shifted when the stench
begins. Throughout the rural districts — elsewhere as
well as here — we have been struck with the laziness
of the people about beginning the day. Daylight is
precious now, and we are abroad early. After a couple
of hours' travelling, we see the housewife sitting down
to milk her cow (by her own fireside, literally), and
the donkey putting his head out of the cottage door,
going forth for his morning meal : he has waited till
the dew is ofP the grass. The children, still hot and
heavy with sleep, in their rags (the same that they
have slept in), are a disgusting sight to the traveller
who is some miles on his road. This is not digres-
sion, though it looks like it.

You ask somebody at Yalentia whether there is no
fishing going on. The answer is that you may get
iiny fish you please. '^But does anybody get it?'"*
Two or three nets may be seen drying on the grass in
the space of five miles, and a man on the road wanders
about with two crabs to sell. You are told that there
is a fishing station about a mile and a half from the
port; a curing-house, where there were to have been
boats and nets and employment for many people; but,
from one thing or another happening, the place has
never been opened. You find that one of the Fitz-
geralds designed this fishery ; that then it was sold —
not yet in operation — to a gentleman who hoped great
things from it ; that he, in his turn, parted with it to

192 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

the Irish Eishing Company, who talk about opening
it; but that it is still only talk. If you look in
upon the people, you find them at dinner, perhaps ;
or rather, you find them eating; for regular meals
seem not to be liked. They prefer salt fish to fresh,
and sour milk to sweet: so you find them turning
out their potatoes and salt fish (dried on the roof or
the fence) upon the floor, — or a board, if they happen
to have one, — there being no utensil whatever in the
house but the big pot the potatoes are boiled in, and
the bogwood keeler or beaker that the cow is milked
into; for this discomfort is not from poverty, but
occurs in a dwelling where the man possesses a cow,
pigs, geese, and chickens, as readily as wdiere he is
worth nothing. The doctor cannot find any sort of
utensil in which to administer medicine in cabins wdiicli
shelter as many farm beasts as childi'en, and where the
owner farms twenty acres ! This is enough. It will
show you one aspect of hfe at Yalentia, — which is
much like that life at Cahirciveen with which every-
body has been made familiar. Now for the other.

At the little port there is a preventive station, a
station of constabulary, a little inn renowned for its
'^fragrant cleanliness," and a large establishment of
slate-works, in connection wdth the splendid slate-
quarries up in the hills. These slate-works have been
in operation five-and-thirty years, sustained by Eng-
lish capital, and conducted by English skill and care.
The workpeople however are Irish, every man of lliem,
except the overlooker, who is Welsh. At present
there are 120 men employed at the quarries and

I

VALE>TIA. 193

works; and the difference between this part of the
population and the rest is so striking that the blind
might be aware of it. It is not only that the men
and boys, even those at the roughest work, can
scarcely be called ragged at all ; there is a look and
tone of decent composure and independence about
them which seems at once to set one down among a
company of well-paid English artisans. These people
are all well-paid : and, by good training, they get to
work very well in time. Their ideas rise with their
position : and then occurs the difficulty — what to do
for wives ; for men thus improved in their tastes do
not exactly Hke to pick up wives out of the stench of
the cabins.

We have mentioned the little inn. It has been
kept for nineteen years past by an Englishwoman.
TV hen a window is broken, she has the glazier over
to mend it. There are no holes in the floor, nor
stains of damp on the walls. The carpets, carefully
mended, are so bright that you see there is no dust in
them. The forks and spoons shine. The white bed-
curtains would show every speck : but there are no
specks to show. There is not even a cobweb any-
where ; and this is the first time we have missed cob-
webs in an Irish inn. The kitchen is as clean as the
bedrooms. TVe questioned the sensible old lady
closely as to how she managed to get her house kept
in this way, for she could not, if she were half her
age, do all this work herself. She told us that she
has taken the most likely girls into her service, shown
them how she chose to have things done, seen that

K

194 LETTERS FEOM IRELAND.

they were done properly ; and, if she met with resist-
ance or laziness, sent away the recusant in a trice.
Such was her account. Elsewhere we were furnished
with an appendix to it. She cannot keep her servants.
However short a time the girls remain with her, they
become superior to other girls in their domestic habits,
so that they are sought by the men at the slate-works.
The superiority is, in most cases, still very small ; and
there is often a sad falling back after a little while;
yet their destiny, as wives to the most prosperous men
on the island, shows what would be the effect of an
improved training of the women. Again, the pro-
prietor of the slate-works lives beside them. He and
his lady are EngHsh; and they bring over English
servants, for their own comfort. They also lose all
their servants immediately. The best men at the
works marry them, as surely as they see their neat
ways and their English industry.

And how was it with this marked population at the
time of the famine ? We have said that out of a po-
pulation of 3000, no less than 2200 received relief.
We have now to add that, out of the remaining 800,
no less than 600 were maintained by the slate- works.
There were actually only 200 who were not either
slate-workers' families or paupers. Such a fact speaks
for itself.

There has been a great emigration from Yalentia, as
from everywhere else ; and some people on the main-
land told us that they thought all the Irish would go
away : and certainly it seems as if all connected with
the land, or with precarious employments, earnestly

VALENTIA. 195

desired to go. They talk to us eagerly about it_, and
look wistfully in our faces, as in some hope that we
might possibly help them away — car-drivers, waiters
at inns, and shop-people, as well as the peasantry. But
we hear notliing of this from men who are earning
regular and good wages. The evident sense of inse-
curity among people who see what is the present de-
pendence upon tourists is, while very touching, a good
symptom. There is no need to explain how earnest
is the desire among such for more and more English
to come and settle. Yalentia is called the next
parish to America. We do wish that the Americans
who are sympathizing with Eepealers, and acting and
speaking on the supposition that all Irishmen are
praying day and night for release from English op-
pression, could step into this " next parish," and thence
on, as far as Derrynane Abbey, and hear for them-
selves how much the Irish are thinking about Eepeal,
and what is their actual feeling towards the English,
on the one hand, and, on the other, towards their own
landlords, who would have composed their '' Parliament
in College Green ^ long ere this, if the Liberator had
had his way.

k2

196

LETTER XXV.

PRIESTS AND LANDLORDS— NEW FEATURES OF IRISH
LIFE.

Octoher 5, 1852.

As week after week passes away, and we travel from
moorland to village, and from coast to city, the old
state of Ireland comes out to the eye more clearly
from the new innovations upon it; and the innova-
tions themselves become more distinct in their opera-
tion as the old state of things reveals itself to the
vigilant observer. At first, there is a confusion, as
in a dissolving view, when a new scene presents itself
before another is gone; but, by degrees, the two
separate themselves into a background and a fore-
ground, and are equally clear at their respective dis-
tances. Day by day now we watch with more in-
terest the movements of the two great background
figures — the landlord and the priest — observing how
they are themselves watching each other, and the
innovations proceeding before their eyes. This jea-
lous watchfulness is the only thing in which they
agree — unless, indeed, it be in their both being very
unhappy.

Very unhappy they both are. The landlord has

PRIESTS AND LANDLORDS. 197

for centuries been a sort of prince on his own terri-
tory. His lands spread along the sea and over the
mountains, and include the rivers, like a royal do-
minion. A man who calls mountains and rivers his
own cannot but feel himself a prince ; and princely is
the pride of the Irish landlord. His word has been
law, and there has been no one to call him to account
till within a quarter of a century. First, his old
enemy, the priest, was emancipated ; and now, one
attack upon his prerogative after another has driven
him to desperation. He believes himself the object
of legislative persecution — he is called to account
about the letting of his lands — he is rated for the
support of his poor — his solvent tenants throw up
their farms and leave the country — and he is not al-
lowed to evict in his own way those who cannot pay
rent. His rents fail him ; and, when he cannot pay
his debts, his estates are sold for the benefit of his
creditors ; and he finds himself stripped of lands,
power, and position, with little (perhaps too little)
solace of sympathy and indulgent construction. Those
who have sunk are, for the most part, quiet — as be-
seems their dignity. Those who are sinking, or in
fear of sinking, are very far from being quiet. They
scold and vituperate the priest, as if both were in
rivalship about rising, instead of being both under
the same doom of fall. There is nothing more pain-
ful than landlord language about the priests ; unless
it be the ever-strengthening suspicion in the ob-
server's mind of the part borne by the priests in the
destruction of the landlord.

198 LETTERS FKOM IRELAND.

The priest is as far from peace and prosperity as
his great rival. He is in deep poverty, from the de-
population of the rural districts,, which were his bank
up to the time of the famine. He is reduced to fol-
low the Protestant zealots from house to house, and
set up his sacerdotal threats against the promises and
praises of the emissaries who are seducing his flock
from him. He is confronted with rustics who hold
up their Bibles before his eyes; and little children
are lifted up in his path to spit Scripture texts in his
face. He is not allowed to manage his duty in his
own way, and to take care of his own position. It is
clearly understood, among both his friends and his
enemies^ that he is controlled "from head quarters,"
so that he is compelled to do what he knows to be
rash, and forbidden to do what he believes to be best.
About the Eibbon Societies, those may speak who
have knowledge. We have none, beyond that which
is possessed by all the world, — that the priests know
all about them ; and that the priesthood have un-
bounded power over them. Whether it is true, as
many beheve, that the matter is managed by an au-
thority above that of the resident priesthood — whe-
ther the resident priests are wiUing or unwilhng par-
ticipants in a system of secret and bloody conspiracy,
is a matter of which we know nothing, xill that we
can say is, that there can be no conspiracy against
the property and life of the landlords that the priests
are not fully informed of"^. Which is the more uu-

* After this was written, we learucd more than we could liave an-
ticipated of the decay of the practice of confession among the men in

NEW FEATURES OF IRISH LIFE. 199

happy class of the two, there is no need to estimate.
The landlord struggles, protests, or silently mourns,
and sinks. The priest goes about with an unpleasant
countenance — significant, discontented, suspicious; in
his unreserved moments confiding to a friendly ear
his rec^rets that Irish affairs are misunderstood "at
head- quarters ;" — that he is compelled to obey orders
which he thinks ignorant and rash; — and that the
Wiseman movement was prematurely made : and
while he thus unburdens his mind, he is sinking
perhaps as fast as his rival.

As for the innovations — the modern features of
Irish affairs — they are curiously connected with each
other, and with an older time. Down in the O^Con-
nell part of Kerry, where Eepeal was the cry which
once echoed from every mountain steep, we saw some
noticeable things. There was a fair at Cahirciveen
the morning that we left the neighbourhood. "We
set out very early ; and for five hours we met the peo-
ple going to the fair. Por a distance of fifteen Irish
miles we saw almost the whole population on the
road, or crossing the bogs towards it. We were
agreeably surprised by their appearance on the whole,
though the produce they were carrying was small.
Many of the women rode — each behind her husband
(not on pillions) — on good horses; and men and women
were well dressed. The number of mules was sur-

Ireland. Among the women it continues ; and from them, and b}"-
other means, the priest knows enough, it is believed, to stop agrarian
crime, if he was bent upon it. But his knowledge of popular secrets
is not what it once was.

200 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

prising ; and there were not a few carts. The walkers
usually carried shoes, and were substantially clothed ;
and we scarcely saw a beggar that whole morning.
Out of some of the most wretched hovels came men
in new blue cloth coats (of the country homespun),
and women with silk handkerchiefs, and here and
there an artificial flower in the cap ; affording another
evidence that the condition of the people is not to be
judged of by that of their dwellings. The last party
we saw going to the fair was a group of three women,
coming down a mountain path near Derrynane Abbey.
Among this population there is now no talk — and
most people think little remembrance of any talk —
about Eepeal. And why ? Some miles further on we
came to the beautiful Dromore, the seat of Mr. Ma-
hony, whose estates extend far away over the mountains
towards Cahirciveen and Killarney. We were struck
with the prosperous appearance of the whole neigh-
bourhood ; and when we reached the wretched Ken-
mare, we heard a good deal about Mr. Mahony and
his property, which explained some tilings that we had
seen. We were told that Mr. Mahony was "fortu-
nately circumstanced " about his property : that he
is never disappointed in his rents ; that everything
grows well on his lands ; that he had not more than
ten or twelve paupers on all his property in the famine
time ; and that, moreover, though he is a Protestant,
he is a very good man, and his neighbours love him.
When we inquired how he came by all this good
^' fortune,'^ we learned that he and his father before
him (wlio was a clergyman) fixed very moderate rents,

NEW FEATURES OF IRISH LIFE. 201

and were very strict about gettiiig them; that they
allowed iio sub-letting on any pretence whatever ; and
that good tillage was encouraged in every way. The
tenants are well off ; pay their rent as a matter of
course ; and have proved themselves able to bear the
stress of such misfortune as can scarcely visit them
again. They do not want Repeal; being naturally
content as they are. But Kenmare ! — what a spec-
tacle it is, even now, when the streets are not strewn
with dead and dying, and young men are not em-
ployed as they were in famine time, to carry the dead
to the parish coffin, which held six corpses. The
Kenmare Union is ^^ the most distressed union almost
in Ireland," we were told on the spot. It is many
thousand pounds in debt ; and there is " a great wish
to shut it up f " but," said more than one informant,
" the commissioners will stand by the poor." It was
pleasant to hear that expression so near Derrynane
Abbey ; to find that the Imperial Government, in this
one form in which it is known to the poor, is re-
garded as their refuge and their hope. Kenmare is,
as everybody knows, chiefly the property of the Mar-
quis of Lansdowne, and so is that part of the neigh-
bourhood which is the most terribly reduced. He is
a good landlord as far as intention goes ; has made
roads here and there all through Kerry, and has
enabled six hundred of his tenantry to emigrate. But
there must be fault somewhere to cause so strong a
contrast between his tenantry and that of his neigh-
bour, Mr. Mahony. Some told us that he had not
been there for fourteen years; and others said that

k3

202 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

everything had begun to improve since his present
agent superseded the former. The former agent (a
Scotchman too) " had an object/' as an advocate of
the potato told us (one who, from his position, ought
to know better), in encouraging the utmost possible
growth of the potato : he thought, by that means, to
reclaim mountain land. So he let small patches of it

to all comers : and they sublet it, and . But it

is the old story, which we may spare ourselves the
pain of telUng again. There were sixteen or twenty
families on one farm, the lessee of which would " walk
about with his hands in his pockets, wliile the poor
paid his rent ;" and on the smallest plots there were
as many mouths as could be fed in the best seasons.
Hence the horrors about Kenmare in the famine,
when half the population of the town died; and in
the country, many roofs were tumbled in upon dead
families whom there was nobody to bury. Even now
some persons who are not landlords hesitate to admit
that this method of " reclamation '^ was a bad one.
They still encourage the culture of the potato, as
"the finest crop after all," wliile seeing what good
consequences are arising from the new agent's prac-
tice of attaching the plots to neighbouring farms, as
fast as the holders emigrate. In Kenmare there
seems to be no trade, and scarcely any productive
industry; while there is more depression than in
almost any other town we have visited : yet there,
quite as evidently as in the more prosperous neigh-
bourhood, the people do iiot want Repeal, but rather
look to British institutions for " standing by the poor."

I

NEW FEATURES OF IRISH LIFE. 203

Since we were there, this subject has beeu more
than once brought to our minds — and in ways not a
little touching. We were standing, the other day, on
a grassy terrace above the glorious river near Cork,
when our host pointed out to us, very high up on the
wooded hill which forms the opposite bank, a white
house, just Wsible among the trees. We admired the
beauty of the situation : but it was not that. That
was the house where Eobert Emmett courted poor
Sarah Curran. There he went, day after day, with
his head full of those schemes of repeal of which she
knew nothing. If it is touching to us to connect
these young people and their fate with that gay scene
of activity and beauty, what must it have been to
them — to him before his violent death, and to her in
her slow decline? Not many hours after, we were
traversing Tipperary, looking out in vain for human
beings, for miles together, — though the cattle and the
tillage in the fields showed that there must be inha-
bitants. Except about the towns we saw nobody.
Where there are people they always come out to look
at the railway train ; but we swept through an almost
deserted country, for scarcely any appeared. As we
entered the valley of the Suir, and drew near Clonmel,
we were observing a long slope of tillage, ending in a
mountain. The mountain was Slieve-na-mon, the
place of meeting of the Executive Council of 1848.
In the private parlour of the inn at Clonmel hung two
prints and a medallion. The prints were portraits of
Smith O^Brien and Meagher. The medallion was
Mitchell. In the course of some conversation with a

204 LETTEllS FROM IRELAND.

resident, we observed that these men, if they had suc-
ceeded at first, must presently have come to ruin, be-
cause they were Protestants, as Protestants cannot
hold rule in a priestly movement. The answer was,
that Ireland is very wretched ; that Ireland has more
wretchedness than she can bear; that a good Pro-
testant is better than a bad Catholic to raise Ireland
out of her wretchedness. This was the first time that
we had met with anything approaching to a vindica-
tion of Eepeal or an interest in it ; and in this case the
plea was simply " wretchedness ^' — meaning poverty.
As we passed down the rest of the valley of the Suir,
we thought that its loveliness and fertility (for it is
full of promise) must rise up before the eyes of the
exiles, much as that river scene at Cork certainly did
within the prison-walls of Eobert Emmett, when he
wrote his last letter to his beloved. Among the re-
cent phenomena of Irish life, we hope we may recog-
nize this — that the lovers of their country have more
knowledge and less presumption than those who have
failed before them ; and that they see that patriotism
requires that they should not endanger the peace of
their country, and the lives of their countrymen, with-
out well knowing what are their own aims and re-
sources.

Of other new features of Irish life I have no room
to speak to-day.

205

LETTER XXTI.

EMIGRATION AND EDUCATION.

Octoher 1, 1852.
Among tlie new features of Irish life, none is more
striking than the emigration that is going on almost
the whole year round. We have met with scarcely
anybody who does not lament over this departure of
the people as an unmitigated misfortune, — it being
the middle-aged and young who go, and the aged
and cliildren who are left behind. You do not need
to be told that we do not share this regret, though we
can easily understand and cordially respect it. The
clearance of the land by a method which secures the
maintenance of the inhabitants seems to us a very
great good. The aged are more safe and comfortable
in workhouses than they could have been amidst the
chances of Irish cabin life in these times : and as for
the children, the orphans and the deserted, they are
the hope of the country. Erom the workhouse schools,
a large body of young people will be coming forth,
very soon, with new ideas, good habits, and qualifica-
tions which will make of them a higher order of pea-
santry than Ireland has ever yet known. But the

206 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

landlord watches with pain the autumnal emigration
which we see going forward from Cork, Waterford,
and Wexford. It is the respectable farming class that
goes out in autumn. Hundreds of farmers — each
with his family party — are, this month, paying away
for passage-money the cash they have received for
their crops ; and day by day they are sailing : here, a
middle-aged father and mother, with a son of twenty,
and four young daughters, paying £112 for their
passage to Australia; there, a younger couple, ^Yith
three or four infants, bound for the Mississippi valley.
Tempted by no lease, — detained by no engagement
with the landlord, such men as these sell oS their
crops and go, paying their rent if they can, and if
they think proper; but too many, not thinking it pro-
per— saying that the landlord has had much more
than his due out of them, on the whole, and that they
can't spare him the cash which will take their children
to a better country. We do not speak of this as a
general case ; but it is too common a spectacle. Of
course, the landlord does not like it. The spring
emigration is equally distasteful to the priest. It is
in spring that the poorest people go ; and they are
the priest's peculiar people. But the priests are
becoming, more and more, one of the heaviest of the
burdens of the poor. They are raising their charges
for their offices as their flocks diminish ; and this does
not add to the inducements to the remainder to stay.
The marriage fee is established at 10s, The priest
now demands £1. Even at this price, his gains are
much diminished ; for the custom of handing round

EMIGRATION AND EDUCATION. 207

the plate used to yield from tenfold to a hundredfold
what is got by fees from the married. A priest used
to get sometimes a hundred pounds from the plate, —
in the days when the priests kept horses and cars.
Young couples now have frequently to borrow money
to pay the priest his fee. A Quaker lady was lately
so struck by the extortion in the case of a couple who
were thus borrowings that she wrote to the priest.
He made an evasive answer to her, and to the young
people insisted on his £1. The lady called on his
bishop. The bishop said that the fee was lO^., 5<?.
for himself, and 5-5. for the officiating priest. The
priest, however, would not give way, and he got his
£1. Such men do not like to see the spring emigra-
tion of peasantry and impoverished farmers, escaping
from their control to a country where they will find
no fairies, will hear no denunciations from the altar,
will incur no sacerdotal curse, and will either turn
Protestant in a little while, or will write home how much
more easy and comfortable an affair Catholicism is in
America than in Ireland. The tradesmen do not like
the emigration — regarding it either as a sign or a
threat that productive industry has ceased or will cease,
and dreading the time when there will be no exporta-
tion of produce, except the landlord's cattle, and no
home demand for what tradesmen sell. The remain-
ing farmers do not like it, because it raises wages.
They will soon have to give their labourers three six-
pences a day, instead of one ; and they do not yet see
that their labourers will then be worth three times as
much as they are now. Some people are asking them

208 LETTERS EROM IRELAND.

now, " Would not you go away if you could get only
6^. a day ? " — " When you pay a man 6^/. a day, are
you not bribing him to lie down on his back in the
sun as soon as you are out of sight V But the farmer
does not yet see this. He talks of the lazy nature of
the labourer, and pays him so little that he has not
strength for severe toil, and needs to lie down in the
sun as soon as his employer's back is turned. The
very few who do like the emigration — through all its
sadness — are the managers of the workhouses, and
men who can look forward to the time — not very dis-
tant— when the aged who are left behind shall have
gone decently to their graves, warmed and fed mean-
while— and the children shall have come forth as a
new race of labourers — and the lands which are now
thrown together for grazing shall have recovered their
fertility, and be again fit for tillage — and a hundred
burdened estates shall have been divided among a
thousand unburdened proprietors — and new sources
of industry and profit may be opened up, as in a new
colony; when, in short, this fine country shall have
renewed its youth, through the removal of its worst
irritations and pains, and the infusion of fresh nou-
rishment.

And here is another innovation. It is pleasant to
be informed and reminded, in almost every house we
enter, that the purchasers in the Incumbered Estates
Court are almost all Irish. Everybody seems to know
exactly how many EngHsli and Scotch there are, and
to be pleased that there are so few, even while hoping
that more English capitalists will come, and telling

EMIGKATION AND EDUCATION. 209

what good has been done by those who are already
liere. They believe, and hope, in fact, that the Irish
purchasers (who cannot be, to any considerable extent,
of the old landlord class) will bring an English mind,
so to speak, to their new enterprise, — conducting it,
not according to feudal prejudices, but to sound eco-
nomical principles. Eor our part we cordially sym-
pathize in this gratification, and say that we hope the
new purchasers are some of the 20,000 Irish capitalists
who have been investing nearly £40,000,000 in our
SJ per cents. Our informants and we join in being
glad that Mr. Ashworth has (if the newspapers say
true) bought the salmon-fishery at Galway, and that
the people about Carrickfergus are associating to work
the great salt-mine there ; and that the " slob'^ lands
reclaimed from AYexford harbour are rewarding the
enterprise of their reclamation ; glad, in short, of every
exposure to the sunshine of daylight and of hope of
the great natural wealth of Ireland.

Though the difficulty about the tenure of land is
an old one, the tenant-right agitation, as a way to a
remedy, is a new feature. It is enough to say now
that the agitation cannot die away fruitlessly ; that it
surely cannot end in the confiscation, avowed or vir-
tual, of the landlord^'s property ; and that no one will
be more benefited than himself if, through this move-
ment, he finds himself released from legal restrictions
which, though called privileges, are as baneful to him-
self as to his tenants, by impeding the improvement of
the soil. It is a movement as yet too indeterminate to be
accepted as more than the expression of a great need.

210 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

Yiewed in that way, it is — however unacceptable to
the landlord and (as a sign of progress) to the priest
— full of interest and of promise. We have seen, for
the last few days, what the country looks like in a
part where the landlords cannot be so feudal as else-
where— in a part where free-trade has poured in food,
and kept the population alive, and where commerce is
too firmly established not to have made its benefits
felt through all the distresses of the last seven years.
In travelling from Waterford to Wexford, the travel-
ler's spirits rise, however sad are some of the road-
side spectacles that meet his eye. Over and beyond
them he sees the ranges of farmyard stacks, the flou-
rishing dairies, the shipments of produce from the long
quays — the signs of mingled agricultural and commer-
cial industry which denote and promise a social wel-
fare that the landlord and priest in league could not
overthrow. While this evidence is before the world's
eyes, in any part of the island, the landlord cannot
uphold, or return to, his feudality; and the great
question of tenure is on the way to a settlement, whe-
ther by tenant-right associations or by other means.

It is grievous to see one new feature of Irish life
disappearing before the echo of the world's admira-
tion has died away. At Cork there stands a chapel,
conspicuous in its situation, and meant to be so for
its beauty — Father Mathew's chapel — built as a mo-
nument of Temperance reform. Its pillars are trun-
cated, its arches stop short in their spring, its windows
are boarded up ; it stands a sad type of the Temperance
Reform itself — a failed enterprise. The relapse of

EMIGRATION AND EDUCATION. 211

the people into intemperance is indubitable and very
rapid. Everywhere we are told that the temperance,
begun in superstition and political enthusiasm, was
maintained only by the destitution of the famine time ;
and everywhere we see but too plainly that the re-
straint was artificial and temporary. " Now that they
are better off," we are told, " they are taking to drink
again /' and so it seems, by what we see in the towns
and by the roadside. We never beheved that such a
process as that of self-government could come, com-
plete, out of such an act as a vow, or such an impulse
as social sympathy. And it seems that the further
safeguard of experience of the healthfulness and com-
fort of sobriety — an experience so lauded before the
famine — is not enough. Once more, and as usual,
we must look for hope and help to that power which
wiU never disappoint us— to education. Of aU the
new features of Irish life, this is the most important.
It is too important a subject to be introduced at the
end of a letter, if it could come in amiss anywhere.
But its name tells everytliing : explains its nature,
and asserts its value. It is a leading out of. Educa-
tion win lead the Irish people out of their woes ; and
it will lead them up to the tlireshold of a better
destiny.

212

LETTER XXVII.

THE PEOPLE AND THE TWO CHURCHES.

October 10, 1852.
In casting back a last look upon Ireland as her shores
recede, the traveller naturally thinks of that remark-
able island as she once was, in contrast with what she
has been since, and with what she is now. There was a
time when L-eland gave light — intellectual and moral
— to the nations of northern Europe ; when she was
the centre of the Christian faith, whence apostles
went forth to teach it, and where disciples of many
nations came to learn it. She had a reputation for
scholarship and sanctity before England and Scotland
were distinctly heard of. Eew nations tlieii stood so
high as the Irish ; and few have ever sunk so lowas she
has since sunk. Her modern state has been a mourn-
ful burlesque upon the ancient one. Instead of the
ancient apostles, we have seen her modern priests ;
instead of the old chiefs, her modern landlords ; in-
stead of the ancient orders and guilds, her recent secret
societies of rebels against the Government, conspirators
against the landlord, and slaves of the priests. In-
stead of the ancient feasts, feuds, and forays, we have

THE PEOPLE AND THE TWO CHUKCHES. 213

seen modem famine, and an escape from home far
more awful to witness than any exodus from a land of
bondage.

Though this last movement proceeds, it is clearly
true that Ireland has entered upon a new period —
upon a new life which is full of hope. We ought not
to be surprised if the people are slow to see this — if
the emigration should go on as at present, for some
years to come. The people cannot be expected to
forget what they have seen in ghastly years just over.
While waste lands lie round about them, and roofless
cottages stare them in the face, wherever they turn,
and the churches quarrel, and priest says that all is
going to ruin, the peasant and the farmer cannot be
expected to see that there is "a good time coming;"
and they may have reached a foreign shore, and have
looked homewards thence for a long while before
they perceive that the good time has actually set in.
But that it is so, is clear to the less-interested ob-
server.

There is nothing the matter with the original
structure of the country. The land is good enough :
the sea is fruitful enough ; and there is plenty of it,
all round the indented coasts; and, under the soil,
there is almost as much wealth as its surface could
yield. There is nothing the matter with the country.
And there is nothing the matter with the men in it,
but what is superinduced. There is no need to
speak of the fine qualities of the Irish character ; for
they are acknowledged all over the world. As for the
rest, employ them at task- work — at secure work —

214) LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

and they soon show themselves as industrious as any-
body. Pay them regular wages, and pay them in
cash, and they immediately show themselves as pro-
vident as anybody. INFot as skilful in depositing and
investing — that is another matter, but as capable of
looking forward, and of providing for the future. Let
them alone about their religion, and obviate compe-
tition for land, and they are as peaceable as anybody.
We cannot yet point out the circumstances in which
they are found as truthful as other people ; for, in sad
fact, wehave met with few signs of that virtue, except
among some educated and in rare cases besides ; but
we can see how the vice has grown up, how it
has been encouraged, and, we trust, how it not only
may be, but will be, outgrown. Lying is the vice of
slaves ; and the extraordinary and extreme inaccuracy
of statement that everybody meets with all over
Ireland is the natural product of the fear and hatred
in which the people have lived for centuries, with such
a priesthood as theirs for their moral guides. One of
us observed to the other, a few days since, in talking
over the testimony of a poor man on an important
matter, that it was the first time since we entered the
country that information given by anybody had been
confirmed by the independent testimony of anybody
else. To us, one of the most mournful spectacles in
the country is that of the courts of justice, — those
platforms on which lying on the largest scale, and
perjury the most audacious, are ostentatiously ex-
hibited to the world. To see for one's self how strong
is the Irishman's natural sense and love of justice,

THE PEOPLE AND THE TWO CHURCHES. 215

and then to observe him as witness or counsel in a
court of laWj is one the strangest experiences we
know. We believe the virtue to be constitutional
and permanent; the vice, induced and temporary.
The Irishman has had too little occasion to see that
law has any sort of connection with justice. When the
connection is more extensively established than even
now, great as are the recent improvements in the law,
the Irishman's love of justice will make him an ally of
the law, instead of its quizzing and cunning foe. We
have had frequent occasion to regret the high walls
which surround all the pretty places in the neigh-
bourhood of the towns we have last visited. While
walking or driving between such walls, with nothing
but the sky to look at, we have been told the reason
— that the people have so httle idea of the law being
instituted for just and mutually protective purposes,
that trespass and damage are preventible only by such
defences as these walls. If we should live to come
again, some years hence, we shall hope to find railings
in the place of these walls. We should Hke to see
what is within ; but we should like much more to see
the people learning that the law is meant to be every
honest man's friend, and guarding it accordingly. As
to the practical failure of trial by jury meanwhile, we
see nothing to be done but to educate the people up
to it. The deepening adversity of the Catholic priest-
hood on the one hand, and the spread of education
through the National Schools on the other, afPord
such promise of an improvement of the national cha-
racter in regard to veracity, that, in our opinion, the

216 LETTERS EROM IRELAND.

effect of such improvement upon the administration
of justice must be waited for. Great as is the evil
of a vicious or insecure administration of justice, it
appears to us to be less than that of altering the prin-
ciple and form, in condescension to a vice of national
character which may be in course of cure.

Up to a very recent time — probably up to this hour
— there has been discussion among EngHsh poHtical
economists as to whether, in consideration of the
Irishman's passion for land, there might not be, in
his case, some relaxation of established rules, some
suspension of scientific maxims, about small holdings
of land; whether the indolence, improvidence, and
turbulent character of the Irish peasantry might not
be changed into the opposite characteristics of the
Flemish and Saxon countryman, by putting them in
the same position. We have borne this question in
mind throughout our survey of the country. ATe pre-
sently saw that the habits of slovenly cultivation, of
dependence on the potato, and of consequent idleness
for the greater part of the year, were too firmly asso-
ciated in the peasant mind with the possession of land
to allow the peasant to be a safe proprietor at present.
A course of discipline was obviously necessary to fit
him, in any degree, for the possession of land : and
tliis discipline he could never have while on the land,
and especially with the priest at his elbow, whose bu-
siness it is to prevent his obtaining knowledge and
independence. By degrees we discovered how the ne-
cessary discipline was being received precisely by those
men who are not on the land. And a very pleasant

THE PEOPLE AND THE TWO CHUHCHES. 217

discipline it is to them, — being that of a growing pros-
perity under work for wages. The chief reason of the
passion of the Irish peasant for land is that land has
always been, to him and to his fathers before him, the
symbol of power, independence, and dignity. Recent
years have shown him great landowners stripped of
their lands, and, in many cases, glad to be so ; — and
men of power, independence, and dignity, whose pos-
sessions are in some other form than land. He feels
something of this himself, when, remembering his
hungering family on his putrid potato-plot, he now
looks at the money he has laid by since he began to
work for wages. He cannot but feel the comfort of
his present state in comparison with the former. We
have said before how great is the readiness, the eager-
ness to work for fair wages, paid regularly and in
cash. It would be absurd now to interfere with this
process, for the labourer's sake. It would be grievous
too for the sake of society. No one who has observed
the isolated Irishman on his solitary potato-ground,
and the Irishman at work on some social labour which
requires an observance of hours and rules, can fail to
be struck with the difference of social quality. Ire-
land would be as quiet a place to live in as any other
if regular and punctual labour went on there as
elsewhere; labour requiring, as manufactures and
public works do, a certain degree of combination of
regular labourers. This combining and quieting pro-
cess is advancing now ; and it will spread with every
extension of scientific industry. By it men may be

L

218 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

fitted, in the course of generations, for the propiie-
torship or other holding of small pieces of land ; but
the process is only beginning as yet. While emigra-
tion is going on, wages must rise. The more they
rise, the less will the peasant think of having land.
When the present rage or necessity for grazing is
moderated, and high farming is begun on the estates
which are changing hands, the peasants notions of
the uses of land will alter prodigiously. If then —
after having seen and learned how land ought to be
used — he once more wishes for a bit, to see what he
can make of it, he will then be more in the condition,
as to fitness, of the Flemish or Saxon cultivator, and
may possibly be safely trusted with a field. But this
time is far off; and it will be a future generation which
sees the change, if it ever happens.

The miseries of Ireland, it has been often and long
agreed, proceed from economical and religious causes.
The worst economical mischiefs are in course of extir-
pation by a method of awful severity, but one which
discloses unbounded promise. The old barriers are
thrown down day by day; the country is opened to
occupation and industry by the process which clears
it of those who could not find a subsistence upon it.
And, while emigration carries away, to prosper else-
where, more than a quarter of a million of people yearly,
the National Schools are training and sending forth, to
be Irish residents, half a million at once of the youth
and childhood of the country. Many good laws
have been passed, breaking down tlie land monopoly,
and precluding the old agitation about landholding.

THE PEOPLE AND THE TWO CHURCHES. 219

The agitation that exists is about ecclesiastical mat-
ters ; and emigration may be found to act as favour-
ably upon this kind of agitation as upon the other.
The late census shows the population of Ireland to
be one-third less than under ordinarily favourable cir-
cumstances it would be. Those who have gone away
are Catholics — of the class that sustains the priest-
hood; and the children that will be born to those
emigrants in their new country would have been the
support of the Komish church at home. Of those
who are to fill up the gaps in the population, some
will be Protestants from England and Ireland ; more
will be educated Catholics out of the National Schools ;
and others will be the children of the Cathohcs now
and hereafter educated at the Queen's Colleges, in dis-
regard of the discouragement from head-quarters. Reli-
gious animosities will be allayed, rather than fomented,
by these two last classes of rising citizens. They will
never be the slaves of such a priesthood as that of
the Ireland of to-day. That priesthood is obviously
destined to decline. It may become more noisy and
quarrelsome as it declines, but its power for mischief
would soon be over, if it were not for the estabKsh-
ment in the land of the Church of the minority.

This Church of England in Ireland is the most for-
midable mischief now in the catalogue of Irish woes.
This church, as we have said before, either does no-
thing or breaks the peace. If she continues in place,
wealth, and artificial power, she may set about num-
bering her days; for it is clear to all dispassionate
inquirers that awakened Ireland will not long tolerate

220 LETTERS FROM IRELAND.

a slothful Church ; and that the strife she provokes,
here and there, with the other Church, will and must
issue in the popular rejection of both. The world
sees, and Ireland feels, an express education of the
young spreading from shore to shore, and a virtual
education of the adults proceeding under the influence
of events — both alike independent of both Churches.
(The world sees, and Ireland feels, that all her peace
and progress (and it is not premature to speak of
peace and progress now) are owing to influences quite
apart from both Churches ; while the obstacles, the
discouragements, the dissensions with which she has
to contend, are owing to the faults of the one or the
other Church, or their mutual strife. What is to be-
come of these Churches or of religion, if it is to be
insisted upon in the form of either, in a country wliich
has begun to taste of peace and progress, no ghost
need come from the grave to tell. »

THE END.

.lOHN BDWARD TAYLOK, PHI.NTER,
-ITTLi; QIKEN STKEKT, LINCOLN'S INN IIELUS.

;j3te:^R^^-fe^R^rf>te?0^^te^gi)^<feaO^

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December 20th, 1852.

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^ By Dr. DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS. 3 vols. 8vo, cloth,

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" "Were we to follow the impulse with ' of vivacity, earnestness, perspicuity, and
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be : suffice it, then, to say that the object interesting as a psychological history." It
which Mr. Church proposes to himself is, embraces all the debatuf/le questions of
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education.' The author pursues the dis- with them with a master's hand." — West-
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Memoir of Johann Gottlieb Pichte. By

WILLIAM SMITH. Secoad Edition, enlarged. Post 8vo, cloth.
Original price, 4s. 6d. ; reduced to 4s. P. 6d.

«• A Life of Fichte, full of noble-
ness and instruction, of grand purpose,

tender feeling, and brave effort !

the compilation of which is executed with
great judgment and fidelity."— Prospec-
ttve Revieiv.

" We state Fichte's character as it is
known and admitted by men of all parties
among the Germans, when we say that so
robust an intellect, a soul so calm, so
loftv, massive, and immoveable, has not

mingled in philosophical discussion since

the time of Lutlier Fichte's

opinions may be true or false ; but his
character as a thinker can be slightly
valued only by such as know it ill ; and
as a man, approved by action and suf-
fering, in his life and in his death, he
ranks with a class of men who were
common only in better ages than ours."—
Stale of German Literature, by Thomas
Carlyle.

The Vocation of the Scholar. By johann

GOTTLIEB FICHTE. Translated fi-om the German, by William
Smith. Post 8vo, cloth, 2s. ; paper cover. Is. Qd. P. Qd.

"' The Vocation of a Scholar' . . .
is distinguished by the same high moral
tone, and manly, vigorous expression which
characterize all Fichte's works in the Ger-
man, and is nothing lost in Mr. Smith's
clear, unembarrassed, and thoroughly
English translation."— DoMg^as Jerrold's
Newspaper.

" We are glad to see this excellent
translation of one of the best of Fichte's

works presented to the public in a very
neat form. . . No class needs an earnest
and sincere spirit more than the literary
class : and therefore the ' Vocation of the
Scholar,' the ' Guide of the Human Race,'
written in Fichte's most earnest, most
commanding temper, will be welcomed
in its English dress by public writers,
and be beneficial to the cause of truth."
— Economist.

On the Nature of the Scholar^ and its Mani-
festations. By JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. Translated from
the German, by William Smith. Second Edition. Post Svo, cloth.
Original price, 3s. Qd. ; reduced to 3s. P. Qd.

" This work must inevitably arrest^the
attention of the scientific physician, by
the grand spirituality of its doctrines, and

"With great satisfaction we welcome
this first English translation of an author
who occupies the most exalted position as

profound and original thinker; as an

the pure morality it teaches.

Shall we

iiTesistiblc orator in the cause of what he be presumptuous if we recommend these
believed to be truth; as a thoroughly views to our professional brethren? or if
honest and heroic man. . . The appear- I we say to the enlightened, the thoughtful,
ance of any of his works in our language | the sei-ious. This — if you be true scholars
is, we believe, a perfect novelty. . . These i — is your Vocation ? We know not a
orations are admirably fitted for their higher morality than this, or more noble
purpose ; so grand is the position taken , principles than these : they are full of
by the lecturer, and so irresistible their | ti-uth." — British and Foreign Medico-Chi-
e\o(i\iQnce."—Exa7niner. \ rurgical Eevicw.

The Way towards the Blessed Life ', or, tlie

Doctrine of Religion. By JOHANN G. FICHTE. Translated by
William Smith. Post Svo, cloth. Original price, Gs. ; reduced
to 5s. P. 6d.

i?

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SPECULATIVE, MORAL, AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 11

The Vocation of Man. By johann gottlieb

FICHTE. Translated from the German, by William Smith. Post
8vo, cloth. Original price, 45. 6d. ; reduced to 4s. P. 6d.

" In the progress of my present work, I
have taken a deeper glance into religion
than ever I did before. In me the emo-
tions of the heart proceed only from per-
fect intellectual clearness ; — it cannot be
but that the clearness I have now attained
on this subject shall also take possession of
my heart." — Ficfite's Correspondence.

" ' The Vocation of Man ' is, as Fichte
truly says, intelligible to all readers who
are really able to understand a book at
all ; and as the history of the mind in its
various phases of doubt, knowledge, and

faith, it is of interest to all. A book of Eternal."— Seniewe/.

this stamp is sure to teach you much, be-
cause it excites thought. If it rouses you
to combat his conclusions, it has done a
good work; for in that very effort you
are stirred to a consideration of points
which have hitherto escaped your indolent
acquiescence." — Foreign Quarterly.

" This is Fichte's most popular work,
and is every way remarkable." — Atlas.

"It appears to us the boldest and most
emphatic attempt that has yet been made
to explain to man his restless and uncon-
querable desire to win the True and the

?

The Characteristics of the Present Age.

By JOHAXN GOTTLIEB FICHTE. Translated from the German,

by William Smith.
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He makes us think, and perhaps more

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and most admirable delineation of the " As a majestic and most stirring utter-
present age ; and on this ground alone we ance from the lips of the greatest German
should bestow on them our heartiest re- j prophet, we trust that the book wiU find
commendation ; but it is because they i a response in many an English soul, and
teach us how we may rise above the age, potently help to regenerate English so-
that we bestow on them our most em- ciety." — The Critic.
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The Popular "Works of J. G. Pichte. 2 vols.

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sufficient care or critical guidance to be
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" Mr. Mackay brings forward in support
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rials The account of the theosophy

of Aristotle, given in the first volume, is
evidently the production of a master of
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" ' The Progress of the Intellect' is in-
comparably the most important contribu-
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views first broadly put forth by rational-
istic German theologians. He has widened
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larger aims— supported them by stores of
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thought to which imagination and reason
contribute in almost equal degrees. This
is unusual praise ; but it is due to unusual
powers ; and to be offered to Mr. Mackay
(luite apart from any agreement in the
tendency or object of his treatise. Wc
will not even say that we have read it with

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SPECULATIVE, MORAL, AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHr. 13

i

theories, if not for those who have an in- i
terest in defending them. For a book so
full of learning, it is remarkably well ,
written." — Econamist. ,

" The work before us exhibits an in-
dustry of research which reminds us of
Cud worth, and for which, in recent litera- '
ture, we must seek a parallel in Germany
rather than in England, while its philo-
sophy and aims are at once lofty and
practical. Scattered through its more
abstruse disquisitions are found passages of

pre-eminent beauty— gems into which are
absorbed the finest rays of intelligence and
feeling. We believe Mr. Mackay's work

is unique in its kind Tlie analysis

and history of the theory of mediation,
from its earUest mythical embodiments,
are admirable, both from their panoramic
breadth and their richness in illustrative
details. We can only recommend the
reader to resort himself to this treasury of
mingled thought and learning."— IFcsf-
minster Review, Jan. 1, 1851.

Intellectual Religion ; Being the Introductory

Chapter to " The Progress of the Intellect, as Exemplified in the
Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews." By R. W.
MACKAY, M.A. 8vo, paper cover, Is. 6fZ.

Money and Morals : A Book for the Times. Con-
taining an attempt to explain the nature of Money Capital, and the
probable effects of the Xew Gold on Commerce, Incomes, and Pubhc
Morals; with some Suggestions relative to the Agricultural Interest,
the Condition of Towns, and the National Defences. By JOHN
LALOR. 8vo, cloth, lOa. P. Is.

" Both in matter and style it is alike
excellent ; and it is difficult to determine
whether Mr. Lalor has placed the public
under greater obligations by the ability
with which he has investigated several of
the most abstruse questions which perplex
political economists — by the felicitous and
forcible language in which his meaning is
uniformly conveyed— or by the high moral
tone which pervades every part of his
volume. Rarely has philosophy assumed
so attractive a garb, or appeared in a cos- ;
tume illuminated by so many of the !
spangles of a lively but chastened fancy ; '
and seldom has the intimate relation which '
most persons feel to exist between the ma- '
terial and moral conditions of society been i
so clearly and thoroughly expounded." — !
Horning Chronicle. j

" These essays possess gi'eat merit, both i
of style and of matter. They are written ■
with address and persuasion, and are not ■
less remarkable for profound philosophic .
judgment and extreme metaphysical re- 1
finement than for a delicate play of poetic
fancy, which at the same time that his :
mind is strengthened and enriched, al- '
lures, sui-prises, and beguiles the imagina- !
tion of the reader. It is, in a word, an [
attractive and quickening work, in which
the practical precepts of a benign and!
elevated philosophy are united in the
happiest combination with the graces of
elegant and harmonious composition." — i
Morning Post.

" Neither a party nor a superficial pro- '
duction. Mr. Lalor is weU versed in all i

the writings of the economists, and not
only in them, but in much other htera-
ture ; and he pours out his stores with
great facility, and in a very graceful man-
ner. Essentially, the book is politico-
economical, but it is also social, moraJ,
and literary, treating many of the topics
of the day, but treating them on scientific
principle. If a temporarj' circumstance
have given birth to the book, the materials
for it have been gathered through years of
study, by much reading and reflection."
— Economist.

" A very able and luminous treatise on
the important questions of capital, cur-
rency, credit, and the monetary system
generally. The author is singularly clear
and accurate in his definitions of the
various branches of what is commonly
called money, or, as he more precisely de-
fines it, 'piurchasing power;' and places
before the reader, in as simple terms as
the subject wiU permit, a picture of the
mode in which income and capital reci-
procally create and augment each other.
A person with a very elementary notion
of the principles of political economy and
monetary science may readily follow and
comprehend liis arguments, and as he goes
on, will be enabfed to appreciate the
merits of the author's deductions. The
subject is one of deep interest, and, though
not concurring in all the views it contains,
we can fairly pronounce the work to be a
valuable contribution to the study of the
science on which it treats." — Slorning
Advertiser.

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Iiectures on Political Economy. By prancis

WILLIAM NEWMAN, Author of ''Phases of Faith," "History of
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"The most able and instructive book, I than economical -wisdom. " — Prospective
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IiOtters on the Iiaws of Man^s Nature and

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" Of the many remarkable facts related
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said, there is a tone in Mr. Atkinson's
thoughts far above those of most of us who
live in slavery to daily experience. The
world is awful to him — truth is sacred.
However wildly he has wandered in search
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If he is dogmatic, he is not vain ; if he is
drying up the fountain of life, yet to him
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" A book from the reasonings and con-
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whatever reception they might have from
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" A curious and valuable contribution
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calm and philosophical theologian may
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" The Letters are remarkable for the
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An Elementary Treatise on Logic. 8vo,

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Philosophy of Human Knowledge. By J. j.

OSBORNE. 8vo, cloth, 4s.

A Treatise on Iiogic. By j. j. osborne. ismo,

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SPECULATIVE, MORAL, AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 15

The Purpose of Existence. Popularly considered,
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Mind. Crown 8vo, cloth. Original price, 7s. 6d. ; reduced to
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Social Aspects. By JOHX stores smith, Author of
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j We receive with pleasure

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Jisto^ mxis giffgrapl^.

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Historical Sketches of the Old Painters.

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thoughts as well as English words. Parti- I gress in Italy. Not the least wonderful
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pathetic spirit, yet free from enthusiastic i " Our author has an earnest, nay, en-
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. . . The criticisms on ' The Past' will j native country ; with the ability and elo-
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The followingr notices refer to the first volume of the work : —

" The work is admirable, useful, in-
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Athenceum.

" This work contains more information
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" In reference to style, the work before |

us is altogether extraordinary, as that of
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" The work before us consists of a con-
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rary history of Italy from the earliest
period of the middle ages to the present
time. The author not only penetrates
the inner i-elations of those dual appear-
ances of national life, but possesses the
power of displaying them to the reader
with great clearness and effect. We re-
member no other work in which the civil
conditions and literary achievements of a
people have been blended in such a series
of living pictui-es, representing successive
periods of history." — Algetncine Zeitung.

"An earnest and eloquent work."— ^
Exayniner.

"A work ranking distinctly in the class
of belles-lettres, and well deserving of a
library place iu England," — Literary
Gaxette.

"A work warmly admired by excellent
judges," — Taifs Magazine.

"An admirable work, written with great
power and beauty." — Prqf. LongJ'cllow. —
Foets and Foctry of Europe.

'^^a^^

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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

17

The Life of Jean Paul Pr. Richter. Compiled

from various sources. Together with his Autobiography, translated
from the German. Second Edition. Illustrated with a Portrait
engraved on Steel. Post 8vo, cloth, 7^. Qd. P. I5.
' The autobiography of Richter, which

extends only to his twelfth year, is one of
the most interesting studies of a true poet's
childhood ever given to the world." —
Lowe's Edinburgh Magazine.

"Richtei has an intellect vehement,
rugged, irresistible, crushing in pieces the
hardest problems ; piercing into the most

women, of the most refined and exalted
natures, and of princely rank. It is full
of passages so attractive and valuable, that
it is diflficult to make a selection as ex-
amples of its character."— /n^MiVer.

" The work is a useful exhibition of a
great and amiable man, who, possessed of
the kindliest feelings, and the most bril-

hidden combinations of things, and grasp- 1 liant fantasy, turned to a high piirpose
ing the most distant; an imagination j that humour of which Rabelais is the gi-eat
vague, sombre, splendid, or appalling, 1 grandfather, and Sterne one of the line of
brooding over the abysses of being, wan- '■ ancestors, and contrasted it with an ex-
dering through infinitude, and summoning ' altation of feeling and a rhapsodical poetry
before us, in its dim religious light, shapes ' which are entirely his own. Let us hope
of brilliancy, solemnity, or terror; a fancy , that it will complete the work begun by
of exuberance literally unexampled, for it : Mr. Carlyle's Essays, and cause Jean Paul
pours its treasures with a lavishness which i to be really read in this country."— -Ej--
knows no limit, hanging, like the sun, a ; aminer.

jewel on every erass-blade, and sowing the t "Richter is exhibited in a most ami-
earth at large~with orient pearls. But i able light in this biography— industrious,
deeper than all these lies humour, the , frugal, benevolent, with a child-like sim-
ruling quality of Eichter— as it were the ' plicity of character and a heart overflow-
central fii-e that pervades and vivifies his ing with the purest love. His letters to
whole being. He is a humorist from his his wife are beautiful memorials of true
inmost soul ; he thinks as a humorist ; \ affection, and the way in which he perpe-
he imagines, acts, feels as a humorist ; tually speaks of his children shows that
sport is the element in which his nature he was the most attached and indulgent
lives and works."- r^o??2a^ Carlyle. ; of fathers. Whoever came within the

" With such a writer it is no common : sphere of his companionship appears to
treat to be intimately acquainted. In the ' have contracted an affection for him that
proximity of great and virtuous minds we death only dissolved : and whUe his name
imbibe apportion of their nature,— feel, as , was resounding through Germany, he re-
mesmerists say, a healthful contagion, are mained as meek and humble as if he had
braced with the same spirit of faifh, hope, still been an unknown adventurer on Par-
and patient endurance — are furnished nasstis." — The Apprentice.
with data for clearing up and working out " The ' Life of Jean Paul ' is a charming
the intricate problem of life, and are in- piece of biography which draws and rivets
spired, like them, with the prospect of the attention. The affections of the reader
immortality. No reader of sensibility can ! are fixed on the hero with an intensity
rise from the perusal of these volumes ' rarely bestowed on an historical charac-
without becoming both wiser and better." ' ter. It is impossible to read this bio -
— Atlas. ' graphy without a conviction of its inte-

" Apart from the interest of the work, as grity and truth; and though Richter's
the life of Jean Paul, the reader leai-ns style is more difficult of translation than
something of German life and German that of any other German, yet we feel
thought, and is introduced to Weimar ; that his golden thoughts have reached
during its most distinguished period — : us pure from the mine, to which he has
when Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Wie- \ given that impress of genius which makes
land, the great fixed stars of Germany, in 1 them current in aU countries." — Christian
conjunction with Jean PauL were there, EeforTuer.
surrounded by beautiful and admiring

Histoire des Crimes du Deux Decembre.

Par VICTOR SCHCELCHER, Representant du Peuple. Post 8vo,
cloth, 7s. 6c?.

" It wants the splendid rhetoric and
sarcasm of ' Napoleon le Petit,' but it
compensates the deficiency by presenting
a circumstantial, animated, detailed his-
tory of the coup d'etat." — Westminster
Eeview.

^b^

" There is much that is new in it, and
every page is curious. The history of the
several ' preventive arrests,' with which
the coup d'etat opened, is told with cir-
cumstantial minuteness, and reads like a
Dumas novel." — Leader.

^^^

i

^ 18

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c) The Educational Systems of the United V

MR. chapman's publications.

States.

[^Preparinrj for j^ublicatlon.

The liife of the Rev. Joseph Blanco "Wliite.

Written by Himself. With Portions of his Correspondence. Edited
by JOHN HAMILTON THOM. 3 vols, post 8vo, cloth. Original
price, £1 4s. ; reduced to 155. P. 2s.

" This is a book which rivets the atten-
tion, and makes the heart bleed. It has,
indeed, with regard to himself, in its sub-
stance, though not in its arrangement, an
almost dramatic character; so clearly and
strongly is the living, thinking, active j
man projected from the face of the re- ;
cords which he has left. j

" His spirit was a battle-field, upon i
which, with fluctuating fortune and sin-
gular intensity, the powers of belief and
scepticism waged, from first to last, their i
unceasing war ; and within the compass of
his experience are presented to our view !
most of the gi-eat moral and spiritual pro- 1
blems that attach to the condition of our i
race." — Quarterly Review. \

" This book will improve his (Blanco
White's) reputation. There is much in

the peculiar construction of his mind, in
its close union of the moral with the intel-
lectual faculties, and in its restless desire
for truth, which may remind the reader
of Dr. Arnold." — Examiner.

" There is a depth and force in this book
which tells." — Christian Itememhrancer .

" These volumes have an interest be-
yond the character of Blanco White. And
beside the intrinsic interest of his self-por-
traiture, whose character is indicated in
some of our extracts, the correspondence,
in the letters of Lord Holland, Southey,
Coleridge, Channing, Norton, Mill, Pro-
fessor Powell, Dr. Hawkins, and other
names of celebrity, has considerable at-
tractions in itself, without any relation to
the biographical purpose with which it
was published." — Spectator.

The History of Ancient Art among the

Greeks. By JOHN WINCKELMANN. From the German, by
G. H. Lodge, Beautifully illustrated. 8vo, cloth. Original price,
12s, ; reduced to Qs. P, Is.

" That Winckelmann was well fitted for
the task of writing a History of Ancient
Art, no one can deny who is acquainted
with his profound learning and genius.

He undoubtedly possessed in the

highest degree the power of appreciating
artistic skill wherever it was met with, but
never more so than when seen in the garb

of antiquity The work is of ' no

common order,' and a careful study of the
great principles embodied in it must ne-
cessarily tend to form a pure, correct, and
elevated taste." — Eclectic Itcvieiv.

" The work is throughout lucid, and free
from the pedantry of technicality. Its
clearness constitutes its great charm. It
does not discuss any one subject at great
length, but aims at a general view of Art,
with attention to its minute developments.
It is, if we may use the phrase, a Grammar
of Greek Art, a sine qua non to all who
would thoi-oughly investigate its language
of form." — Literary World.

" Winckelman is a standard writer, to
whom most students of art have been more

or less indebted. He possessed extensive
information, a refined taste, and great zeal.
His style is plain, direct, and specific, so
that you are never at a loss for his mean-
ing. Some very good outlines, representing
fine types of Ancient Greek Art, illustrate
the text, and the volume is got up in a
style worthy of its subject." — Spectator.

" To all lovers of art, this volume will
fui-nish the most necessary and safe guide
in studying the pure principles of nature

and beauty m creative ai*t We

cannot wish better to English art than
for a wide circulation of this invaluable
work." — Standard of Freedotn.

" The mixture of the philosopher and
artist in Winckelman's mind gave it at
once an elegance, penetration, and know-
ledge, which fitted him to a marvel for

the task he undertook Such

a work ought to be in the library of every
artist and man of taste, and even the
most general reader will find in it much
to instruct, and much to interest him." —
/Itlas.

m^^^^

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f^^$^

POETRY AND FICTION.

19 m

Iiife and Letters of Judge Story^ the eminent

American Jurist, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, and Dane Professor of Law at Har\'ard University.
Edited by his Son, WILLIAM W. STORY. With a Portrait.
2 vols. 8vo, cloth. Original price, £1 10s. ; reduced to £1. P. 3^.
"Greaterthan any Law "Writer of which I stone."— Lord Campbell, in the Hotue of
England can boast since the days of Black- | Lards, April', 1843.

I

FreciOSa : A Tale. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 75. 6d.

The Village Pearl : A Domestic Poem ; with Mis-
ceUaneous Pieces. By JOHN CRAWFORD WILSON. Fcap.
8vo, cloth, ds. 6d.

The Nemesis of Faith.

FeUow of Exeter College, Oxford.

By J. A. FROLT)E, M.A., late
Post 8vo, cloth, 6s. P. 6c?.

" ' The Nemesis of Faith' possesses the
first requisites of a book. It has power,
matter, and mastery of subject, with that
largeness which must arise from the
writer's mind, and that individual cha-
racter— those truths of detail — which
spring from experience or observation.
The pictures of an English home in child-
hood, youth, and early manhood, as well
as the thoughts and feelings of the student
at Oxford, are painted with feeling per-
vaded by a current of thought: the re-
marks on the humbug of the three learned
professions, more especially on the world-
liness of the church, are not mere decla-
mation, but the outpouring of an earnest
conviction : the Picture of Anglican Pro-
testantism, dead to faith, to love, and to
almost everj-thing but wealth-worship,
■with the statement of the objects that
Newman first proposed to himself, form
the best defence of Tractarianism that has
appeared, though defence does not seem to

be the object of the author As the

main literary object is to display the
struggles of a mind with the growth and
grounds of opinion, incidents are subordi-
nate to the intellectual results that spring
from them: but there is no paucity of in-
cident if the work be judged by its own
standard . ' 'Spectator .

" The most striking quality in Mr.
Froude's writings is his descriptive elo-
quence. His characters are all living
before us, and have no sameness. His
quickness of eye is manifest equally in his

insight into human minds, and in his per-
ceptions of natural beauty The

style of the letters is everywhere charm-
ing. The confessions of a Sceptic are often
brilliant, and always touching. The clos-
ing narrative is fluent, graphic, and only
too highly wrought in painful beauty." —
Prospective Review, May, 1S49.

" The book becomes in its soul-bnming
truthfulness, a quite invaluable record of
the fiery struggles and temptations through
which the youth of this nineteenth century
has to force its way in religious matters.

Especially is it a great warning

and protest against three great falsehoods.
Against self-deluded word orthodoxy and
bibliolatry, setting up the Bible for a mere
dead idol instead of a living witness to
Christ. Against frothy philosophic Infi-
delity, merely changing the chaff of old
systems for the chaflf of new, addressing
men's intellects and ignoiing their spirits.
Against Tractarianism, trying to make
men all belief, as Strasburgers make
geese aU liver, by darkness and cram-
ming; manufacturing state folly as the
infidel state wisdom : deliberately giving
the lie to God, who has made man in
his own image, body, soul, and spirit, by
making the two first decrepit for the

sake of pampering the last

Against these three falsehoods, we say,
does the book before us protest : after its
own mournful fashion, most strongly when
most unconsciously." — Eraser's Mag.,
May, 1849.

*6S$^

■€^0^

20 MR. chapman's publications.

Essays^ Poems^ Allegories^ and Fables. By

JANUARY SEARLE. 8vo, 4s.

Poems by R. W. Emersono Post 8vo, cloth, 45.

Norica^ or, Tales of Niirnberg from the Olden Time.

Translated from the German of August Hagen. Fcp. 8vo, orna-
mental binding, suitable for presentation, uniform with *' The
Artist's Married Life." Original price, 7s. 6d. ; reduced to 5s.
P. 6d.

" This pleasant volume is got up in that
style of imitation of the books of a cen-
tury ago, which has of late become so
much the vogue. The typogi'aphical and
mechanical departments of the volume
speak loudly for the taste and enterprise
employed upon it. Simple in its style,
quaint, pithy, reasonably pungent — the
book smacks strongly of the picturesque
old days of which it treats. A long study
of the art-antiquities of Niirnberg, and a
profound acquaintance with the records,
letters, and memoirs, still preserved, of
the times of Albert Diirer and his great
brother artists, have enabled the author
to lay before us a forcibly-drawn and
highly-finished picture of art and house-
hold life inthat wonderfully art-practising
and art-reverencing old city of Germany."
—At/as.

" A delicious little book. It is full of a
quaint garrulity, and characterized by an
earnest simplicity of thought and diction,
which admirably conveys to the reader the

household and artistic German life of the
times of Maximilian, Albert Diirer, and
Hans Sachs, the celebrated cobbler and
' master singer,' as well as most of the
artist celebrities of Niirnberg in the 16th
century. Art is the chief end and aim of
this little history. It is lauded and praised
with a sort of unostentatious devotion,
which explains the religious passion of the
early moulders of the ideal and the beau-
tiful ; and, perhaps, through a consequent
deeper concentration of thought, the secret
of their success." — Weekly Dispatch.

" A volume full of interest for the lover
of old times; while the form in which it
is presented to us may incite many to
think of art, and look into its many won-
drous influences with a curious earnest-
ness unknown to them before. It points
a moral also, in the knowledge that a
people may be brought to take interest in
what is chaste and beautiful as in what
is coarse and degrading." — Manchester
Examiner.

Hearts in Mortmain^ and Cornelia. A Novel,

in 1 vol. Post 8vo, cloth. Original price, lOs. 6c?. ; reduced to
5s. P. Qd.

" To come to such writings as ' Hearts
in Mortmain, and Cornelia' after the
anxieties and roughness of our worldly
struggle, is like bathing in fresh waters
after the dust and heat of bodily exertion.
. . . .. To a peculiar and attractive grace
they join considerable dramatic power,
and one or two of the characters are con-
ceived and executed with real genius."—
ProHpcctive lievieto.

" IJoth stories contain matter of thought
and reflection which would set up a dozen
common-placo circulating-library produc-
tions."— Examiner.

"It is not often now-a-days that two
works of such a rare degree of excellence
in their class are to be found in one

volume; it is rarer still to find two works,
each of which contains matter for two
volumes, bound up in these times in one
cover."— Observer.

" The above is an extremely pleasing
book. The first story is written in the an-
tiquated form of letters, but its simplicity
and good taste redeem it from the tedi-
ousness and appearance of egotism which
generally attend that style of composi-
tion."— Economist.

" Well written and interesting." — Dailt/
Netrs.

" Two very pleasing and elegant novels.
Some passages display descriptive powers
of a high order." — Britannia.

I)

l<S^3^^

^=6s$^^i

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POETRY AND FICTION.

21

t

The Siege of Damascus ; An Historical Romance.

By JAMES NISBET. In 3 vols, post 8vo, cloth. Original price,

£1 11^. 6d. ; reduced to 10s. P. Is. M.
"A romance of very unusual power,
such as must arrest attention by its quali-
ties as a work of fiction, and help the good

cause of liberty of thought." — Leader.

" There is an occasional inequality of
style in the writing, but, on the whole, it

may be pronounced beyond the aTerage of
modem novelists .... whilst descriptive
passages might be selected that betray a
very high order of merit." — Manchester
Examiner.

Peter Jones; or, Onward

12mo, price 3s. P. M.

Bound. An Autobiography.

Reverberations, Part I., \s. Part 11., 2s. Fcp.

8vo, paper cover.
" In this little vei-se-pamphlet of some
sixty or seventy pages, we think we see
evidences of a true poet ; of a fresh and
natural fount of genuine song ; and of a
purpose and sympathy admirably suited to
the times. .... The purchaser of it will
find himself richer in possessing it by
many wise and charitable thoughts, many
generous emotions, and much calm and
quiet, yet deep reflection." — Examiner.

" Remarkablefor earnestness of thought
and strength of diction."— 3/or«//jfi/era/d.

" The author of these rhymed brochures
has much of the true poetic spirit. He is
always in earnest. He writes from the full
heart. There is a manliness, too, in all his
utterances that especially recommends

them to us As long as we have such

' Eeverberations' as these, we shall never
grow weary of them." — Weekly News.

The Artistes Married Life ; Being that of Albert

Diirer, Translated from the German of Leopold Schefer, by Mrs.

J. R. STODAET. 1 vol. fcp. 8vo, ornamental binding, 6s. P. 6d.
" It is the worthy aim of the novelist to ' " The work reminds us of the happiest

show that even the trials of genius are part eflTorts of Tieck The design is to

of its education — that its very wounds are show how, in spite of every obstacle,

furrows for its harvest No one, genius will manifest itself to the world,

indeed, would have a right to expect from and give shape and substance to its beau-

the author of the ' Laienbrevier ' (see tiful dreams and fancies It is

AttiencEum, No. 437y such a stem and for- a very pure and delightful composition, is
cible picture of old times and trials as a , tastefully produced in an antique style,
Meinhold can give — still less the wire- and retains in the translation all the pe-
drawn sentimentahties of a Hahn-Hahn ; culiarities (without which the book would
but pure thoughts — high morals — tender lose half its merit) of German thought

feelings — might be looked for The and idiom." — Britannia.

merits of this story consist in its fine pur- "Simply then we assure our readers
pose, and its thoughtful, and for the most ' that we have been much pleased with this
part just, exposition of man's inner life. work. The nai-rative portion is well con-
To those who, chiefly appreciating such ceived, and completely illustrates the
qualities, can dispense with the stimulants author's moral ; while it is interspersed
of incident and passion, the book before us •■ with many passages which are ftill of
will not be unacceptable." — AthencBum. \ beauty and pathos." — Inquirer.

The Bishop's "Wife : A Tale of the Papacy. Trans-
lated from the German of Schefer, by Mrs. J. R. STODART. Fcp.
8vo, cloth gilt. Original price, 4s. ; reduced to 2s. P. Qd.

Three Experiments of Idving: Within the

Means. Up to the Means. Beyond the Means. Fcp. Svo, orna-
mental cover and gilt edges, Is, P. 6d.

\

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22

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MR. chapman's publications.

ma.

An Analytical Catalogue of l^r. Chapman^s

Publications. Price Is. P. 6d.

%* To enable the reader to judge for himself of the merits of Mr.
Chapman's publications, irrespective of the opinions of the press —
whether laudatory or otherwise — an Analytical Catalogue has been
prepared, which contains an abstract of each work, or, at least, such
an amount of information regarding it as will furnish him with a
clear conception of its general aim and scope. At the same time,
from the way in which the Catalogue is drawn up, it comprises a
condensed body of Ideas and Pacts, in themselves of substantive
interest and importance, and is therefore, intrinsically, well worthy
the attention of the Student.

Cheap BookSj and how to get them. Being

a Reprint, from the Westminstee Review for April, 1852, of the
article on " The Commerce of Literature ;" together with a Brief
Account of the Orisfin and Progress of the Recent Agitation for Free
Trade in Books. By JOHN CHAPMAN. To which is added, the
judgment pronounced by Lord Campbell. Second Edition. Price Is.
P. 6d.

A Report of the Proceedings of a Meeting

(consisting chiefly of Authors) held 'May 4th, at the House of Mr.
John Chapman, 142, Strand, for the purpose of hastening the re-
moval of the Trade Restrictions on the Commerce of Literature.
Third Edition. Price 2d.

Two Orations against taking away Human

Life, under any Circumstances ; and in Explanation and Defence of
the Misrepresented Doctrine of Non-Resistance. By THOMAS
COOPER, Author of "The Purgatory of Suicides." JPost Svo, in
paper cover, Is. P. 6d.
" Mr. Cooper possesses undeniable abili- the highest degree manly, plain, and vigor-
tics of no mean order, and moral com-aje ous." — Moriiing Advertiser.

beyond many The manliness with " These two orations are thoroughly im-

which he avows, and the boldness and zeal bued with the peace doctrines which have
with which he urges, the doctrinesof peace lately been making rapid progress in many
and love, respect for human rights, and unexpected quarters. To all who take an
moral power, in these lectures, are worthy interest in that great movement, we would
of all honour." — Nunronfoi7>iisl. i-econiniond this book, on accoimt of the

Mr. Cooper's style is intensely clear
and forcible, and displays great earnest-

ness and fine human sympathy ; it is in i Chester Examiner.

^5^

fervid iltxiuence and earnest truthfulness
which pervade every line of it."— iV«w-

■^6^

i^^^s^

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MISCELLANEA.

23

stories for Sunday Afternoons. By Mrs.

DAWSON. Square 18mo, cloth, Is. Qd. P. M.

" This is a very pleasing little volume,
•which we can confidently rGcommend. It
is designed and admirably adapted for the
use of children from five to eleven years of
age. It purposes to infuse into that tender
age some acquaintance with the facts, and
taste for the study of the Old Testament.
The style is simple, easy, and for the most

part correct. The stories are told in a
spirited and graphic manner.

" Those who are engaged in teaching the
young, and in laying the foundation of
good character by early religious and
moral impressions, will be thankful for
additional resources of a kind so judicious
as this volume." — Inquirer.

!'

Essays by ISmerson.

by THOS. CARLYLE. Post i
" The difficulty we find in giving a pro-
per notice of this volume arises from the
pervadingness of its excellence, and the
compression of its matter. "With more
learning than Hazlitt, more perspicuity
than Carlyle, more vigour and depth of
thought than Addison, and with as much
originality and fascination as any of them,
this volume is a brilliant addition to the
Table Talk of intellectual men, be they
who or where they may." — Prospective
Hevieio.

" Mr. Emerson is not a common man,
and everything he writes coiitains sugges-
tive matter of much thought and earnest-
ness."— Examiner,

" That Emerson is, in a high degree,
possessed of tlie faculty and vision of the
seer, none can doubt who will earnestly
and with a kind and reverential spirit
peruse these nine Essays. He deals only
with the true and the eternal. His pierc-
ing gaze at once shoots swiftly, surely,
through the outward and the superficial,
to the inmost causes and workings. Any
one can tell the time who locks on the
face of the clock, but he loves to lay bare
the machinery and show its moving prin-
ciple. His words and his thoughts are a
fresh spring, that invigorates the soul that
is steeped therein. His mind is ever
dealing with the eternal ; and those who
only live to exercise their lower intellec-
tual faculties, and desire only new facts

Second Series, with Preface,

Ivo, cloth, 3s. Qd. P. Qd.

j and new images, and those who have not

' a feeling or an interest in the great ques-
tion of mind and matter, eternity and
nature, will disregard him as unintelligi-
ble and uninteresting, as they do Bacon
and Plato, and, indeed, philosophy itself."

j — Doztglas Jerrnld's Magaxine.

I " Beyond social science, because beyond

I and outside social existence, there lies the
science of self, the development of man in
his individual existence, within himself
and for himself. Of this latter science,
which may perhaps be called the philo-
sophy of individuality, Mr. Emerson is an
able apostle and interpreter." — League.

"As regards the particular volume of
Emerson before us, we think it an im-
provement upon the first series of essays.
The subjects are better chosen. They
come home more to the experience of the

1 mass of mankind, and are consequently

j more interesting. Their treatment also
indicates an artistic improvement in the

I composition." — Spectator.

j " All lovers of literature will read Mr.
Emerson's new volume, as the most of
them have read his former one; and if
correct taste, and sober views of life, and
such ideas on the higher subjects of
thought as we have been accustomed to
account as ti-uths, are sometimes outraged,
we at least meet at every step with origi-

j nality, imagination, and eloquence." —

j Inquirer.

The Beauties of Channing. With an Introductory
Essay. By WILLIAM MOUNTFORD. 12mo, cloth, 2s. M.
P. 6fZ.

" This is really a book of beauties. It is
no collection of shreds and patches, but a
faithful representative of a mind which
deserves to have its image reproduced in
a thousand forms. It is such a selection
from Channing as Channing himself might
have made. It is as though we had the
choicest passages of those divine discourses

read to us by a kindred spirit

Those who have read Martyria will feel
that no man can be better quahfied than
its author, to bring together those passages
which are at once most characteristic, and
most i-ich in matter tending to the moral
and religious elevation of human beings."
— Inquirer.

I

24

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MR. CHAPMAN S PUBLICATIONS.

William von Humboldt^ s Iietters to a

Female Friend. A Complete Edition. Translated from the Second
German Edition. By CATHERINE M. A. COUPER, Author of
"Visits to Beechwood Farm," "Lucy's Half-Cro\vu," &c. 2 vols,
post 8vo, cloth, 10s. P. Is.
"We cordially recommend these volumes ] sess not only high intrinsic interest, but

to the attention of our readers an interest arising from the very striking

The work is in every way worthy of the circumstances in which they originated.

character and experience of its distin- "SVe wish we had space to verify

guished author."— £>«% News. our remarks. But we should not know

" These admirable letters were, we where to begin, or where to end ; we

have therefore no alternative but to re-
commend the entire book to careful pe-
rusal, and to promise a continuance of
. occasional extracts into our columns from
the beauties of thought and feeling with
which it abounds." — Manchester Exa-
miner and Times.

"It is the only complete collection of
Westminster and Foreign Quarterly He- j these remarkable letters, which has yet
vieiv. I been published in English, and the transla-

" The beautiful series of W. von Hum- i tion is singularly pei-fect; we have seldom
boldt's letters, now for the first time ' read such a rendering of German thoughts
translated and pubUshed complete, pos- into the EngUsh tongue."— C;-jVjc.

believe, first introduced to notice in
England by the 'Athenaeum;' and per-
haps no greater boon was ever conferi'ed
upon the English reader than in the pub-
lication of the two volumes which contain
this excellent translation of William Hum-
boldt's portion of a lengthened corre-
spondence with his female friend." —

Iiocal Seif-Grovemment and Centralization :

The Characteristics of each, and its Practical Tendencies as affecting
Social, Moral, and Political Welfare and Progress : including com-
prehensive Outlines of the English Constitution. By J. TOULMIN
SMITH. Post 8vo, cloth. Original price, 8s. Qd. ; reduced to 5s.
P. Is.
" This is a valuable, because a thought-
ful, treatise upon one of the general sub-
jects of theoretical and practical politics.
No one in all probability will give an ab-
solute assent to all its conclusions, but the
reader of Mr. Smith's volume will in any
case be induced to give more weight to
the important principle insisted on." —
TaiCs Magazine.

" Embracing, with a vast range of con-
stitutional learning, used in a singularly
attractive form, an elaborate review of all
the leading questions of our d&^j."— Eclec-
tic Kcviinn.

" This is a book, therefore, of imme-
diate interest, and one well worthy of the
most studious consideration of every re-
former ; but it is also the only complete
and correct exposition we have of our po-
litical system; and we mistake much if

chapters of the soundest practical philo-
sophy; every page bearing the marks of
profound and practical thought."

" The chapters on the crown, and on
common law, and statute law, display a
thorough knowledge of constitutional law
and history, and a vast body of learn-
ing is brought forward for popular infor-
mation without the least parade or pe-
dantry."

" Mr. Toulmin Smith has made a most
valuable contribution to English litera-
ture; for he has given the people a true
account of their once glorious constitu-
tion ; more than that, he has given them
a book replete with the soundest and most
practical views of political philosophy." —
Weekly News.

" There is much research, sound prin-
ciple, and good logic in this book ; and we

it does not take its place in literature as j can recommend it to the perusal of all
our standard text-book of the consti- who wish to attain a competent knowledge
tution." I of the broad and lasting basis of English

"The special chapters on local self-go- constitutional law and practice." — MorU'
vernment and centralization will be found ing Advertiser.

Bible Stories.

p. u.

^^

By SAMEUL AVOOD. 2 vols. 12mo, cloth, 3s

MISCELLANEA.

The Duty of Slngland : A Protestant Layman's Reply
to Cardinal AViseraan's "Appeal." 8vo, Is. P. 6d.

" The ' Protestant Layman ' argues the 1 logical argument, free inquiry, and free
question in the right spirit. He would ) thought, unbiassed by authority."- — Man-
meet the ' Papal aggressioii' solely by i Chester Spectator.

The Critical and JSaiscellaneous Works of

THEODORE PARKER. Post 8vo, cloth, Qs. P. Is.

"It will be seen from these extracts His language is almost entirely figurative:
that Theodore Parker is a writer of con- the glories of nature are pressed into his
siderable power and freshness, if not origi- service, and convey his most careless
nality. Of the school of Carlyle, or rather thought. This is the principal charm of
taking the same German originals for his his writings ; his eloquence is altogether
models, Parker has a more sober style and unlike that of the English orator or es-
a less theatric taste. His composition sayist ; it partakes of the grandeur of the
wants the grotesque animation and rich- | forests in his native land; and we seem,
ness of Carlyle, but it is vivid, strong, and ; when listening to his speech, to hear the

frequently picturesque, with a tenderness
that the great Scotchman does not pos-
sess."— Spectator .

" Viewing him as a most useful, as well

music of the woods, the rustling of the
pine-trees, and the ringing of the wood-
man's axe. In this respect he resembles
Emerson; but, unlike that celebrated

as highly-gifted man, we cordially wel- | man, he never discourses audibly with
come the appearance of an English reprint 1 himself, in a language unknown to the
of some of his best productions. The wox"ld — he is never obscure ; the stream,
'Miscellaneous' pieces are characterized I though deep, reveals the glittering gems
by the peculiar eloquence which is without I which cluster so thickly on its bed." —
a parallel in the works of English writers. ' Inquirer.

Fara Bellum^ War and Invasion. 8vo, Is. 6d,

Counsels and Consolations. By Jonathan farr.

18mo, cloth, 2s.

Commercial and Banking Tables^ embracing

Time — Simple Interest — Unexpired Time and Interest — Interest.
Account Current, Time, and Averaging — Compound Interest —
Scientific Discount, both Simple and Compound — Annual Income
and Annuity Tables, equally adapted to the Currencies of all Com-
mercial Nations. The True or Intrinsic Value of the Gold and
Silver Coins, and the Standard "Weights and Measures of all Com-
mercial Countries. Also American, English, French, and German
Exchange. Together with the Exchange of Brazil, and the Impor-
tation of Rio Coffee. Arranged with reference to the harmonizing
of the Accounts and Exchanges of the "World, the whole upon an
Original Plan. By R. MONTGOMERY BARTLETT, Principal of
Bartlett's Commercial College, Cin., 0. One "Volume Royal Quarto,
handsomely bound in russia, £5.

%* This Wo7'Jc is Copyright.

26 MR. chapman's publications.

Calico Printing as an Art Manufacture.

a Lecture read before tlie Society of Arts by Edmund Potter. 8vo,
sewedj Is.

The Cotton and Commerce of India^ Con-
sidered in Relation to the Interests of Great Britain; with Remarks
on Railway Communication in the Bombay Presidency. By JOHN
CHAPMAN, Founder and late Manager of the Great Indian Penin-
sular Railway Company. 8 vo, cloth. Original price, 12s. ; reduced
to 6s. P. Is.

" Promises to be one of the most useful '
treatises that have been furnished on this ,

important subject It is distin- ,

guished by a close and logical style, coupled
".vith an accuracy of detail which will, in a ,
great measure, render it a text-book." —
T/mrs, Jan. 22, 1851. .

" Marked by sound good sense, akin to j
the highest wisdom of the statesman. The l
author has given to the public the most \
complete book we have for some time met I

with on any subject." — Economist.

" Mr. Chapman's great practical know-
le Ige and experience of the subjects upon
which he treats have enabled him to col-
lect an amount of information, founded
upon facts, such as we believe has never
before been laid before the public. Tlie
all-important questions of supply, produc-
tion, and prices of cotton in India, as well
as the commercial and financial questions
connected with it, are most ably treated."
— Morning CJironicle.

" Written by an intelligent, painstaking,
and well-informed gentleman

Nothing can be more correct than his
views, so far as they extend, his survey
and character of districts, his conclusions
as to the supply the earth can yield, and
I his assertion that the cost of transit is
with Indian cotton the first and ruling
element of price." — Daily News.
j " Mr. Chapman's work is only appre-
I elated in the fulness of its value and merits
I by those who are interested in one or other
I branch of his subject. Full of data for
I reasoning, replete with facts, to which the
; most implicit credit may be attached, and
free from any political bias, the volume is
I that 7a)a, if not incognita avi.i, a truth-
ful blue book, a volume of statistics not
cooked up to meet a theory or defend a
practice." — Britannia.

"The arrangement is clear, and the
treatment of the subject in all cases mas-
terly."— hidian News.

" This is a comprehensive, practical,
careful, and temperate investigation," &c.
— Indian Mail.

The Temporalities of the Established

Church, as they are and as they might be ; Collected from authentic
Public Records. By WILIilAM BEESTON, an Old Churchman.
Svo, paper cover, Is. P. id.

-K?»

^^^

■^^e^

cT

y'^

CHAPMAN'S

yikarj far il^t ^t0j)lc.

Uniform, Post 8vo, ornamented paper cover.

Sketches of European Capitals. By ayilliam

WARE, Author of "Zenobia; or, Letters from Palmyra," " Aure-
lian," &c. Is. P. 6d.

n.

Ziiterature and Life. Lectures by e. p. Whipple,

Author of " Essays and Reviews." Is. P. 6d.

Representative Men.

Is. 6d. P. 6d.

" Mr. Emerson's boob is for us rather
strange than pleasing. Like Mr. Carlyle,
he strains after effect by quaint phrase-
ology—the novelty will gain him admirers
and readers. At the same time there is
good sterling stufiF in him ; — already pos-
sessing a great name in his own country,
and being well known to the reading world
of Europe, his present work, speaking of
men and things with which we are fami-
liar, will extend his fame. It is more real
and material than his former volumes;
more pointedly written, more terse and
pithy, contains many new views, and is
on the whole both a good and a readable
book." — Economist.

" There are many sentences that glitter
and sparkle like crystals in the sunlight ;

Lectures by R. W. EMERSON.

I and many thoughts, which seem invoked
by a stern philosophy from the depths of
the heart."— TFVeAZy Kei/'s.

' " There is more practical sense and
wisdom to be found in it (tliis Book) than
in any of the Books he has given to the
world, since his first When Emer-
son keeps within his doptli, he scatters
about him a gi-eat deal of true wisdom,
mingled with much genuine poetry There
is also a merit in him w-hich it would be
ungrateful not to acknowledge ; he has
made others think; he has directed the
minds of thousands to loftier exercises than
they had known before : he has stimu-

I lated the reflective faculties of multitudes,

. and thus led to inquiry, and inquiry cer-
tainly will conduct to truth." — Critic.

TV.

The Fourth Edition of

The Soul; Her Sorrows and Her Aspira-
tions. An Essay towards the Natural History of the Soul as the
true Basis of Theology. By FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN,
formerly FeUow of Bafliol College, Oxford. 25. P. 6d.

V.

Christian Theism. By c. c. hennell. Author of -'An

Inquiry into the Origin of Christianity." Is. P. 6d.
VI.

Historical Sketches of the Old Painters.

By the Author of " Three Experiments of Living," &c.

VII.

The First Series of Essays. By r. w. emerson.

!

^d^

A 28 MR. chapman's publications.

9

THE

WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

Price Six Shillings per Number.

Annual Sulscrij^tion, v:hen paid to the Publisher in Advance, £1 ; or if
the worh he delivered by post, £1 4s.

Contents of "No. V.— January, 1853.

YI

I. Mary Tudor.
II. The Condition and Prospects of
Ireland.

III. Charity, noxious and beneficent.

IV. The English Stage.

V. American Slavery, and Emanci-
pation by the Free States.

The Atomic Theory, before
Christ and since.
YII. History and Ideas of the Mor-
mons.
VIII. Daniel Webster.
IX. X. XI. XII. Contemporary Li-
terature of England, America,
Germany, and France.

I.

II.
III.
IV.

V.
VI.

Contents of No. IV.— October, 1852.

VII. Goethe as a 3Ian of Science.
VIII The Profession of Literature.
IX. The Duke of Wellington.
X, XI. XII. XIII. Contemporary
Literature of England, Ame-
rica, Germany, and France.

The Oxford Commission.
Whewell's Moral Philosophy.
Plants and Botanists.
Our Colonial Empire.
The Philosophy of Style.
The Poetry of the Anti- Jacobin

Contents of No. III.— July, 1852.

I. Secular Education.
II. England's Forgotten Worthies.
The Future of Geology.
Lord Jeffrey and the Edinburgh

Review.
The Tendencies of England.
The Lady Novelists.

Ill
IV

VII.

Senti-

The Political Life and
ments of Niebuhr.
VIII. The Kestoration of Belief.
IX. Sir Robert Peel and his Policy.
X. XI. XII. XIII. Contemporary
Literature of England, Ame-
rica, Germany, and France.

"The Westminster Revhw, which has failed under so many managements,
under its new management promises to be no failure at all. Good healthy
blood stirs in it, and we have little doubt that it will not only win its way to as
high a point in public estimation as it held in its best days, but that more prac-
tical results will follow, and it will be found to sell. With equal ability, we
observe a larger and more catholic spirit. In the present number there are
several good subjects soundly and admirably treated, and there is a delightful
article on • England's Forgotten Worthies," especially to be named with i)lea-
sure. The notion of treating quarterly in four final articles the general con-
temporary literature of England, America, Germany and France, is very good ;
the articles are well done, and tliey place tiie reader of tlie review in luissession
of a kind of information which he wants about tiie literature of the day. Let
us hope, then, that our old friend the Westminster, brought as it now is into com-

G<::^3^^

■*<ss^

THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW. 29

plete harmony with the spirit of the time, and having its pages furnished by
thinking men as well as able writers, will take gradually a sure hold of the
public, and will be hought by tho-e who heretofore have been satisfied to read it
as it came to them borrowed from the circulating library. We wish its new
conductors all success. They are in the right way to obtain it." — Examiner,
July 24th.

" The new Westminster Review is a brilliant and thoughtful one." — Leader,
July 1 0th.

" In general, the Rerietc is characterized by great novelty and great vigour."
— Economist, July 10th.

" This number, like its predecessors, is characterized by enlarged thought,
loftiness of purpose, and a style of great freshness, brilliance, and vigour." —
Sheffield Free Press.

" The reader who looks to the successive issues of the Westminster for a well-
stored field of matter whence he may derive intellectual improvement and grati-
fication, will find his expectations fully answered in the current number, which
is quite equal to its predecessors of the new series." — British Mercury/.

" This organ of free inquiry and liberal politics proceeds \igorously in the
hands of Mr. Chapman. The entire contents of the number are rich and
varied." — Bradford Observer.

" This new number is as attractive for the variety of its articles, and the force
and brilliancy which generally characterize them, as for the value of the solid
thoughts and pregnant suggestions which t:iey contain. Fine 'mitingtoo often
of itself sustains the reputation of our quarterlies; fine and deep thinking is less
cared for; but in the union of chese two seldom united quahties the Westminster
may be fairly said to be at present pre-eminent." — Coventry Herald.

" We have no hesitation in saying that the Westminster Review, in point of
talent, is not surpassed by any of its numerous contemporaries." — Cambridge
Independent.

" The present number well maintains that high and independent position
which the first did and promised to continue." — Plymouth Journal.

" The contributions are of a very high order." — Western Times.

" The present number contains no fewer than thirteen articles, all written
with consummate ability, and all treating of popular and interesting subjects."
— Nottingham Mercury.

Contents of No. II.— April, 1852.

I. The Government of India. j V. Shelley and the Letters of Poets.

II. Physical Puritanism. TI. The Commerce of Literature.

III. Europe: its Condition and Pro- ' TIL Lord Palmerston and his Policy.

spects. i YIII. Early Quakers and Quakerism.

IV. A Theory of Population, de- : IX. X. XL XII. Contemporary

duced from the General Law Literature of England, Ame-

of Animal Fertihty. rica, Germany, and France.

" We had occasion to speak of the promise of the Westminster under its new
management, and the second number entirely confirms our favourable judgment.
It would be difficult to find anywhere, now-adays, so much originahty, ability,
and sincerity, in the same number of pages." — Daily News.

'* The Westminster Review, under its new editorship, seems destined to achieve
a very distinguished position as a critical Titan, and to become a powerful agent
in the mental and moral progress of the age." — Weekly Dispatch.

" The current number of this periodical is one of unusual merit. * * * * »
Must be ranked among the very best that have been given to the world since
the first publication of the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly." — Observer.

I

b2

BO

MR. CHAPMAN S PUBLICATIONS.

" The present is altogether an excellent number of the Westminster" — Leeds
Times.

" >Vithout enumerating the articles, we are safe in giving them credit for
solidity and ability." — The Scotsman.

" The number presents a more than usually rich and varied programme." —
Glasgow Citizen.

" The present number of this able organ of progress is, upon the whole,
superior to the last." — Glasgow Sentinel,

" The Westminster holds on bravely in the career started under its new edi-
torial regime, grappling in an intrepid and uncompromising spirit of inquiry
with what may be called the organic, social, political, literary, and philosophical
questions of the age." — Liverpool Mercury.

" The articles exhibit a well-selected variety of topics, and their treatment is
characterized by largeness of view, independence of thought, and marked
abiHty." — Bristol Mercury.

" The manifest improvement and infusion of new life and spirit into this
Quarterly, which marked the first number of the new series, are well kept up."
• — Stamford Mercury.

" These wide fields for discussion are treated in a masterly manner by the
writers now engaged upon this important serial." — Reading Mercury.

" Our previous opinion of tlie Westminster Review, under the new management,
is fully borne out by the present number, which contains evidence oC unques-
tionable originality, great ability, and unatfected heartiness in the cause of pro-
gress."— Sheffield Free Press.

" It is almost impossible to select a paper, and say that it bears the palm.
* * * One is unable to say which most recommends itself to his notice by its
philosophy, its clearness, the knowledge which it communicates, or the language
with which it is adorned." — Sherborne Journal.

" The second number of the Westminster, under its new management, evidences
all the freshness and force which characterized the first number, with a full
measure of that comprehensiveness which especially characterizes the most
original and far-seeing and philosophic of the Quarterlies." — Coventry Herald.

Contents of No. I.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VIII

IX.

-January, 1852.

Vir. The Ethics of Christendom.

Political Questions and Parties

in France.
Contemporary Literature of
England.
X. Retrospective Survey of Ame-
rican Literature.
XL XII. XIII. Contemporary Lite-
rature of America, Germany,
and France.

I. Representative Reform.
II. Shell Fish: their Ways and
Works.
The Relation between Em-
ployers and Employed.
Mary Stuart.
The Latest Continental Theory

of Legislation.
Julia von Kriidener as Co-
quette and Mystic.
" This number is perfectly satisfactory." — Daily Neirs.
" ]5xhibits a very effective coalition of independent minds." — Globe.
" Wlaen we compare the two Reviews, {Quarterly and ff'estminster,) and point
out the greater merits of the Westminster, we try it by a very I'.igli stanihird, and
pass on it a very high eulogium. The new life it has received is all vigorous and
healthy." — Ecoiiomist.

" Contains some of the best and most interesting articles which have ever
graced a ' Quarterly.*" — Weekly Dispatch.

" Its principles remain the same as of yore, though enforced with far more
vigour." — Observer.

" Distinguished by high literary ability, and a tone of fearless and truthful
discussion which is full of promise for the future." — Weekly Xews.

l^^^^^

:h

■^€s

^ TUE WESTMINSTER REVIEW. 31

" The variety and ability of the articles are great, and the general tone of
the Review is unequivocally the expression of matured thought, and earnest and
elevated convictions." — Inquirer.

" We congratulate Mr. Chapman on the high tone and spirit of superior
enterprise manifest in the Eeview." — Court Journal.

The "Westminster Review" is designed as an instiiiraent for the
development and guidance of earnest thought on Politics, Social Philo-
sophy, Religion, and General Literature ; and is the organ of the most
able and independent minds of the day.

The fundamental principle of the work is the recognition of the Law
of Progress. In conformity with this principle, and with the consequent
conviction that attempts at reform — though modified by the experience
of the past and the conditions of the present — should be directed and
animated by an advancing ideal, the Editors seek to maintain a steady
comparison of the actual with the possible, as the most powerful stimulus
to improvement. Xevertheless, in the deliberate advocacy of organic
changes, it will not be forgotten, that the institutions of man, no less
than the products of nature, are strong and durable in proportion as
they are the results of a gi'adual development, and that the most salutary
and permanent reforms are those, which, while embodying the wisdom
of the time, yet sustain such a relation to the moral and intellectual con-
dition of the people as to ensure their support.

In contradistinction to the practical infidelity and essentially destruc-
tive policy which would ignore the existence of wide-spread doubts in
relation to established creeds and systems, and would stifle all inquiry
dangerous to prescriptive claims, the Review exhibits that untemporizing
expression of opinion, and that fearlessness of investigation and criticism,
which are the results of a consistent faith in the ultimate prevalence
of truth.

Aware that the same fundamental truths are apprehended under a
variety of forms, and that, therefore, opposing systems may in the end
prove complements of each other, the Editors endeavour to institute such
a radical and comprehensive treatment of those controverted questions
which are practically momentous, as may aid in the conciliation of diver-
gent views. In furtherance of this object, a limited portion of the work,
under the head of " Independent Contributions," is set apart for the
reception of articles ably setting forth opinions which, though not dis-
crepant with the general spirit of the Review, may be at variance with
the particular ideas or measures it will advocate. The primary object of
this department is to facilitate the expression of opinion by men of high
mental power and culture, who, while they are zealous friends of free-
dom and progress, yet differ widely on special points of great practical
concern, both from the Editors and from each other.

§

I

^ -ee

-e^^

32

THE WESTMlxVSTER REVIEW.

The Review gives especial attention to that wide range of topics which
may be included under the term Social Philosophy. It endeavours to
form a dispassionate estimate of the diverse theories on these subjects,
to give a definite and intelligible form to the chaotic mass of thought
now prevalent concerning them, and to ascertain both in what degree
the popular efforts after a more perfect social state are countenanced by
the teachings of politico-economical science, and how far they may be
sustained and promoted by the actual character and culture of the
people.

In the department of politics careful consideration is given to all the
most vital questions, without regard to the distinctions of party ; the
only standard of consistency to which the Editors adhere being the real,
and not the accidental, relations of measures — their bearing, not on a
ministry or a class, but on the public good.

In the treatment of Religious Questions the Review unites a spirit of
reverential sympathy for the cherished associations of pure and elevated
minds with an uncompromising pursuit of truth. The elements of eccle-
siastical authority and of dogma are fearlessly examined, and the results
of the most advanced Biblical criticism are discussed without reservation,
under the conviction that religion has its foundation in man's nature, and
will only discard an old form to assume and vitalize one more expressive
of its essence. While, however, the Editors do not shrink from the
expression of what they believe to be sound negative views, they equally
bear in mind the pre-eminent importance of a constructive religious
philosophy, as connected with the development and activity of the moral
nature, and of those poetic and emotional elements, out of which pro-
ceed our noblest aspirations and the essential beauty of life.

In the department of General Literature the criticism is animated by
the desire to elevate the standard of the public taste, in relation both to
artistic perfection and moral purity ; larger space is afforded for articles
intrinsically valuable, by the omission of those minor and miscellaneous
notices which are necessarily forestalled by newspapers and magazines,
and equivalent infonnation is given in a single article showing the course
of literary production during each preceding quarter. The Foreign Sec-
tion of the Review is also condensed into an Historical Survey of the
novelties in Continental and American Literature which have appeared
in the same interval.

— e!8«-

I

i

^^ ce^^,^

MR. chap.man's public ations. 33

THE

PROSPECTIVE REVIEW

^ (Qiiartcrli) S^onrnal

or THEOLOGY AND LITEEATUEE.
Price 2s. 6d. per ^nuraber.

Contents of No. XXXII.— November, 1852.

I. Money and Morals.
II. The Eddas.
III. Uncle Tom's Cabin.

I Y. Hartley Coleridsre's Lives of the

Northern Worthies.
Y. Lectures on Moral Philosophy.

!?

The " Prospectite Review" is devoted to a free theology, and the
moral aspects of literature. Under the conviction that lingering in-
fluences from the doctrine of verbal inspiration are not only depriving
the primitive records of the Gospel of their true interpretation, but even
destroying faith in Christianity itself, the work is conducted in the con-
fidence that only a living mind and heart, not in bondage to any letter,
can receive the living sjnvit of revelation; and in the fervent belief that
for all such there is a true Gospel of God^ which no critical or historical
speculation can discredit or destroy, it aims to interpret and represent
Spiritual Christianity in its character of the universal religion. Fully
adopting the sentiment of Coleridge, that " the exercise of the reasoning
and reflective powers, increasing insight, and enlarging views, are
requisite to keep alive the substantial faith of the heart," — with a grate-
ful appreciation of the labours of faithful predecessoi-s of aU churches, —
it esteems it the part of a true reverence not to rest in their conclusions,
biit to think and live in their spirit. By the name, " Pkospectiye
Review," it is intended to lay no claim to discovery, but simply to .
express the desire and the attitude of Progress; to suggest continually ^')
the duty of using past and present as a trust for the future; and openly
to disown the idolatrous conservatism, of wHatever sect, which makes
Cliristianity but a lifeless formula.

s^se^i

:^m. chap:\ia:s s purlicatioxs.

CJt Catljolit Stries.

Sermons of Consolation. By F.

W. p. Greenwood, D.D. 3*. cloth.

Self- Culture. By Wm. Ellery

Chanxing. Paper Covers, 6d.; Is.
cloth.

3.

{Out of Print.)
4.

The Critical and Miscellaneous

Writings of Theodore Parker. CI. o*.
5.
(Out of Print.)
6.
Essays. By R. W. Emerson.
(Second Series.) "With a Notice by
Thomas Carlyle, 3*.

7.

Memoir of J. Gottlieb Fichte.

By William Smith. Second Edi-
tion, enlarged. Cloth, As.

The Vocation of the Scholar.

By JoiiANN Gottlieb Fichte.
Cloth, 2s.; paper cover, 1*. 6c?.

9.

On the Nature of the Scholar,

and its Manifestations. By Johann
Gottlieb Fichte. Second Edition.
Cloth, 35.

The Vocation of Man. By Jo

II ANN GoTTLn;n Fichte. Cloth, is

The Characteristics of ttie Pre-
sent Afre. By Johann Gottlieb
Fichte. Cloth, Oi-.

12.

The Way towards the Blessed

Life; or, The Doctrine of Beligion.
By Johann Gottlieb Fichte.
Translated by Wllli.^jvi Smith.
Cloth, 5*.

13.

Popular Christianity: its Tran-
sition State and probable Develop-
ment. By Frederick Foxton, A.B.
Cloth, 5*.

14.

Life of Jean Paul Fr. Richter.

Compiled from various sources. To-
gether with his Autobiography, trans-
lated from the German. Second
Edition. Illustrated with a Portrait,
engraved on Steel. Cloth, 75. Crf.

15.

Wm. von Humboldt's Letters

to a Female Friend. A Complete
Edition. 2 vols, cloth, 10*.

16.

Representative Men. Seven

Lectures. By Ralph Waxdo Emer-
son. Cloth, 1*. 6rf.

17.

Religious Mystery Considered.

Cloth, 2*.

18.
God in Christ. Discourses by
Horace Bushnell. In 1 vol. cloth,

6*.

19.

St. Paul's Epistles to the Corin-
thians : An Attempt to convey their
Spirit and Signilican e. By the
Rev. John IIamilton Thom. 1 vol.

cloth, 7*.

20.

A Discourse of Matters per-
taining to Keligion. By Theodore
Parker. I'ost 8vo, cloth, -u.

•>
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THE CATHOLIC SERIES.

35

" The various works composing the ' Catholic Series' should be known to all lovers
of literature." — Morning Chronicle.

" Without reference to the opinions which they contain, we may safely say that
they are generally such as all men of free and philosophical minds would do well to
know and ponder." — Nonconformist.

" A series of serious and manly puijlieations." — Econotnisf.

" This series desei-ves attention, both for what it has already given, and for what
it promises." — Tait's Magazine.

" A series not intended to represent or maintain a form of opinion, but to bring
together some of the works which do honour to our common natui'e, by the genius
they display, or by their ennobling tendency and lofty aspirations." — Inquirer.

" It is highly creditable to Mr. Chapman to find his name in connexion with so
much well-directed enterprise in the cause of German literature and philosophy. He
is the first publisher who seems to have proposed to himself the worthy object of in-
troducing the English reader to the philosophic mind of Germany, uninfluenced by
the tradesman's distrust of the marketable nature of the article. It is a very praise-
worthy ambition; and we trust the public will justify his confidence. Nothing could
be more unworthy than tl.e attempt to discourage, and indeed punish, such unselfish
enterprise, by attaching a bad reputation for orthodoxy to everything connected with
German philosophy and theology. This is especially unworthy in the * student,' or
the ' scholar,' to borrow Fichte's names, who should disdain to set themselves the
task of exciting, by their friction, a popular prejudice and clamour on matters on
which the populace are no competent judges, and have, indeed, no judgment of their
own, — and who should feel, as men themselves devoted to thought, that Vvhat makes
a good book is not that it should gain its reader's acquiescence, but that it should
multiply his mental experience ; that it should acquaint him with the ideas which
philosophers and scholars, reared by a training different from their own, have labo-
riously reached and devoutly entertain ; that, in a word, it should erJarge his
materials and his sympathies as a man and a thinker." — Frospeciive Beview.

(S

I

fe>^

I)

FREE TRADE IN BOOKS.

^IR. JOHN CHAPMAN, who originated the agitation for free trade
in books, which has recently been brought to a successful termination,
invites public attention to the liberal terms on which he is now enabled,
by the dissolution of the Booksellers' Association, to supply books of all
kinds.

MISCELLANEOUS ENGLISH BOOKS.

Mr. Chapman will allow, for Cash, a discount of one-sizth,
or twopence in the shilling*, from the advertised prices of
all new books which are published on the usual terms. Works issued
by those publishers who, in consequence of the recent change, deter-
mine to reduce the amount of discount allowed to the trade, will be
supplied at relatively advantageous rates.

Periodicals and Magazines supplied on the day of publication, at a
discount of 10 per cent, from the published prices.

Orders for Old or Second-hand Books carefully attended to, and
Binding executed in all varieties of style.

AMERICAN BOOKS AT GREATLY REDUCED PRICES.

The retail prices of American Books have hitherto been much higher
than needfid in England, in consequence of the practice of alloNving a
large discount to the trade ; Mr. Chapman begs to announce that he will
in future supply the English public with American BookS, at
the cost price of importation, with the addition only of
a small remunerative commission.

The prices attached (in English currency) to the List of American
Books published by Mr. Chapman, with the exception of Periodicals
and Magazines, are the ZiOWest Nett Prices, from which,
therefore, no discount can be allowed.

Mr. C. INVITES ATTENTION tO hls EXTENSIVE AND CAREFULLY-SELECTED

STOCK OF American Books, a classified Catalogue of which, at the
GREATLY-REDUCED PRICES, may uow be had, gratis, on application, or by
post in return for two stamps.

^' Purchasers are especially requested to transmit their orders for
American Books, accompanied by a remittance, or reference in Town,
directly to Mr. CJiapman, ^vho will promptly execute them, and forward
the Books, by Post or otherwise, as desired.

LONDON: JOHN CHAPMAN, 142, STRAND.

^^-9 -€^6^

tETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT

ro— ^ 202 Main Library

OAN PERIOD 1
HOME USE

2

3

\

5

6

ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS

P^..^ ^ ...^ -.rr-.^Aprcr ..AY BE VAOE 4 DAYS PRIOR TO DUE DATE.

"■ ' ........ K. i-f/ONTHS, AND 1 -YEAR.

DUE AS STAMPED BELOW

Y 04 1991

SEf^TONILL

ECHOinTT MAY 1

9IHAR 2 9 199!)

U. C. BERKELEY

^miii: m ')7 '^]

Jl^T 1 1 I9)f

RETURNED

APR 2 1 )9S5

MAR 0 2 199E

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Santa Cruz Jitney

NOV 1 1 1997

*^'*»»ta Cn»

UNIVERSITY OF CA
FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 1/83 BERKELEY, Cm

LD 21A-bOm-iu. ou

U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES

CD0blE5177

M 196859

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

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